“I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.” Anaïs Nin:
Yes.
I should be rehearsing choreography. I should be finishing the novel. I should be spring cleaning and washing windows. Stitching hearts. Embroidering a special design. And yet, all I really want to do is let the sea call me away to walk along its empty beaches with my dog. Not so much for the stars to pull my hair, but for the wind to toss it back, to pull at strands. I think I’m restless because I want to do what I want rather than what I should.
Life isn’t like that though, is it? Whilst it would be nice to focus on the beach as I look for discoveries amongst the seawrack and sags, concentration needs to be channelled into other needy areas. Sometimes, selfishly, I just want to shut the door on ‘out there’ and do my thing. I wish it was so for my husband as well, but like I say, life isn’t like that.
Are we allowed to be pulled by the stars, do you think? Maybe I’m craving my inner hippie, an essence of free spirit. But I’m not a nonconformist, a bohemian or a maverick. Just a fairly traditional person with a streak or two of contrariness.
Maybe a little bit of Mary Oliver who said: ‘When things are going well, you know, the walk does not get rapid or get anywhere: I finally just stop and write. That's a successful walk!’ The words resonate.
I seem to relate so much to poets and writers with a deep connection to nature. It thrills me that Henry Beston said: ‘Nature is part of our humanity, and without some awareness of that… mystery, man ceases to be man.’
It seems to me that restlessness and obligation go together and that the key to being happily pulled by the stars is to flee to beaches, bush and the garden and to leave the trials and tribulations of everyday living behind.
Golly, if only it were that easy…
Other things:
Oh my gosh, other things! My pup, that sweet (ha!) womble, slipped stealthily into the bedroom, pulled my pink journal off the bookshelf by the bed and chewed. Not the repaired front cover, but the bottom back corner. Why, I ask? He had no answer.
I completely ignored him, went to the city to buy some jeans (leaving him set up with chewsticks, an cardboard toilet roll filled with treats and with folded ends, toys and dog music from Spotify). When I returned, I still ignored him and then sat with a cup of tea and the little fellow came over, repentant or so it seemed, and licked my hand.
I just had to cuddle him. Wouldn’t you?
This time, I shall mend the journal with another felt strip, but without flowers and bees. This time, I’ll embroider words and they may not be pretty. Maybe not exactly Dame Judi Dench but they will mention the dog, and not politely…
The Pup had a lesson with our dog trainer this week and it was more about we humans finetuning and letting the pup find his way through repetition and reward. He was very good, did what he should. Just saved the chewing of the journal for later (a kind of payback for having to go to school? No, surely not…). Although honestly, he’s barely damaged a thing since he’s been in the family. A good little boy who was pronounced Dog of the Week by Dave at our local grocer’s, who picked him up, cuddled him and thought he was the bees’ knees (hadn’t seen my journal, of course).
Really, the only time I haven’t felt restless this week was in the ballet studio when I needed to concentrate and where we all wore long skirts to trail around our legs. It’s certainly a different feel…
I grew two tulips in the Matchbox garden, the most perfect colours – so soft, delicate, like the inside of a shell. I bought a tiny cameo many years ago when I visited a cameo-making artisan’s studio near Rome and to me it was quite rare because most cameos I had seen were made of a peach-pink shells. This little cameo was a true shell-pink, a diaphanous shade with the hint of newborn skin.
Like the cameo, my homegrown tulips were as if a watercolour artist had bled the tiniest drop of pink onto a wash and then added the odd line of green with the finest brush – maybe just a few hairs. It’s a bulb I would grow again because I hold my breath every time I look at it.
Plants are popping out almost as frequently as the lambs. Freesias fill the house with a subtle and enticing fragrance. Strawberries are putting out flowers, the viburnum and Japanese maples are bursting.
Even a fledgling project is leafing.
Last year, I found a tiny and very bent silver birch seedling and wondered if its contorted shape would lend itself to bonsai. I eased it from the crack in the earth and potted it up in a traditional Japanese container with soil and moss. I found the most convoluted piece of driftwood on a beach walk and which looks like a dragon at a certain angle, perhaps well suited to sit with the infant silver birch. Despite that I know nothing about bonsai, today I spent a tranquil ten minutes extracting fine weeds from the moss and thinking that I must buy some bonsai wire so that I can encourage the twists and turns as the tree grows. I would love to train the tree to arch back over the dragon - I could then give the dragon some fantasy backstory suited to a novel. ‘The meticulous cultivation and shaping of a bonsai represent discipline, patience, and personal growth … it (symbolizes) harmony, balance, peace, and tranquillity between man and nature.’ I sat quietly, focused on the delicate moss, on the fine weeds and on the tender trunk, leaf and buds of the seedling. I was surprised. Perhaps this is another way to calm my restlessness.
Do you think spring causes restlessness? A new season, a new beginning, what will it bring, what shall I be?
For now, I just want to have the time to walk, to work in nature and to observe, to find contemplation and stillness at the same time. I think only then, will my hair be pulled (gently) by the stars.
Music this week? You know how I feel, don’t you?
I'm restless today too. I have a novel to work on, but there are family issues that need resolving; that I can't resolve. So I am restless. Here Autumn is approaching ... fast. It has rained hard for days. As yet the colours of Autumn are still to emerge. But the waves were high on the Pembrokeshire coast this morning, the spray on the rocks impressive. And your post brought me some peace sitting here trying to drag out some words, lose myself in my story. Thank you.
Yes, spring absolutely makes me restless. There's so much energy pulsing in nature: plants leaving dormancy, critters reproducing, pollen flying free. But these days I think there's also a persistent undercurrent of revolutionary energy that I can only pray gets channeled away from violence. So, I think we feel all of that.
Pup's interest in your journal is fascinating. Like he knows it is where you keep your closest thoughts and he wants to be sure he's among them. When I was a kid, we had a smart, naughty poodle. He wasn't allowed down the hall into the bedrooms, but when my parents left town, he'd sneak to my mother's side of the bed and lift his leg! A chewed journal might be a better way to express whatever it is he's hoping to tell you.
Feeling good is one of my favorite songs, and I'd not seen that gorgeous video before. Thank you, Prue.
I'm enjoying my time in Sydney and thinking of you a much shorter distance away than usual. :)