Reclamation...

... for Knots in the String.

As I put myself back together again after Easter in hospital (where the Easter Bunny found me on Easter Sunday and placed a gold egg on my breakfast tray) I’m more mindful than ever of our surroundings.

The coast…

There is an essence of peace, as if one could reach up hands to the ether and tease a bit away and carry it in a pocket. The parrots hang off the seeding sunflowers, which is the exact reason they were planted. The black cockatoos and bush ravens call on their way back to communal bush hang-outs for the night. If one listens hard, one can hear a small wavebreak – a barely-there shush-slap. The sky is bruised by the oncoming night – deep blue, navy, purple – with a dark grey cloud band heading out to sea. The sun has set behind the hills so that the cupola crests of the Thumbs become black silhouettes. There are few houses lit and the roads are empty.

But it was worth being in the city away from the Madhatter’s Tea Party of Easter. Because everyone in the city had fallen down the rabbit-hole to end up on the coast! To be honest, even hospital was quiet, apart from the odd buzzer calling a nurse, or the beep of I/V machines.

One could have been bored in hospital, but inspired by The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page, I collected my own stories from the staff. A nurse with dogs who played netball and ruptured her Achilles last year and ended up having to work in Medical Records before surgery because she could no longer weight-bear. Dogs filled our conversations as I/V bags were changed and obs were taken. She wanted so badly to see struggling patients be allowed to have their dogs visit. I had visions of the Terrier dashing down the corridors, plastic tubing caught round his legs, barking with JRT ebullience as staff chased him in what he would only think of as the best game ever! The nurse of course has sedate Golden Retrievers, so it’s unlikely she would know what its like to live with a dog that’s permanently plugged into a power source!

And boredom isn’t really ever on my radar, anyway. There’s always writing, reading, listening and stitching. I was warned I might be bored when up for the longer surgical stay, but I doubt it. Loving solitude teaches one to be relatively self-sufficient.

But back to mindfulness, awareness. It’s become colder and each morning as I open the blinds, the bay seethes with steam like a bath filled with hot water. The sky is clear and unsullied by cloud and there’s the first sign of the winter to come – a punishing down-the-river wind (katabatic winds ). I go swimming later when the winds still and the air is warmer. The ocean has cooled beneath. Chilled and refreshing with the clearest water so that I can see my toenails. I swim in lazy circles, relishing the cool, and finally walk out to a snipy little southerly that tries to raise goosebumps, but the sun beats it off. Frequent cool swims are part of the get-fit-for-surgery regime.

Nightwalks here are now a question of rugging up and headlamps. But as yet, not quite black enough to search for nightlife. The headlamp is more for the Terrier with his damaged sight. There’s no sound of helicopter, police or fire sirens, traffic or even security alarms. Just the perennial stroke and slap of the waves, and I suck in a breath and blow it out in relief that I’m back where I belong.

Doing:

Noting down ideas that drifted into my mind whilst in hospital, ie where my novel should be heading, marginalia in the truest sense of the word. Walking lots. Noticing, soaking up, imbibing – breathing.

Harvest time. Baskets and boxes of imperfect but organic pears, apples and quinces. Chutney made. A pear and almond slice with raspberries. One mean little pumpkin harvested that is an insult. Hydrangeas to deliver to David and Gavan. Tying up the infant grapevines. Visiting my gardener friend, Willie, to walk her gardens and give her Enchantment by Katherine May. Mourning the aid workers who were wantonly killed by the IDF seven innocents who were deliberately targeted. A bald statement from Netanyahu that ‘this happens in war.’ I’m looking for any sort of compassion from his mouth at all, and not callousness.

Audio:

The Girl on The Boat by PG Wodehouse (1921). Everything that is foppish and flippant about the English upper classes tied tightly with all that is caustic and classless about 1920’s Americans. There’s cork-blackened faces for a concert, and gollywogs.

Would the author have got away with that now, in this politically correct era? Indeed, why did I choose the novel? I’d never read any PG Wodehouse although I’d seen much on TV. Goodness, it’s like watching The Importance of Being Earnest, completely benign and so almost am-dram. But it’s simple writing that is filled with punchy oneliners and it has been slick and funny because the narrative and narrator are so droll!

Kindle:

The Keeper of Stories by Sally Page. Filled with depth and dimension.

“She wonders if part of storytelling is not only about sharing the good things in life but also enabling the storyteller to send the bad things out, to let them disperse like dust in the wind.”

11/10 for this book. It’s taught me to draw folk out, to listen and store their stories even more. Not because I’m a writer, but because people have things to say and a need to be acknowledged…

Print:

The Gardening Book by Monty Don. I’ve had this on order since it was released in the UK before Christmas, and it was finally released in Australia this month. Everything that is perfection about Monty. I’m a happy little Vegemite…

And so another week passes. I think roses might be appearing in my cheeks and for the first time in a month, I’m now hungry, savouring the smell and sight of food, thinking about cooking. A good sign. I work on reclaiming Brother Bruno’s 12^th century story and on reclaiming my garden and my insignificant place in the scheme of coastal life. All of that, of course, allows a reclamation of health.

If only the rest of the world could reclaim sense so easily…

Music this week?