Tesserae...

... for Knots in the String.

I had a flu shot this week at my GP’s practice in the city.

The miles drifted by as I drove back to the coast and I began to feel a little unwell – the norm for me after vaccinations. Sandy Toksvig’s dulcet tones read Melted Into Air and I remembered a line or two from a Substack piece I read a week ago:

I think my whole life is little snacks of activities. Big things happen even when I do them (in) small bites. That’s how I get by. Little 500 words. Little email. Little cup of tea. Little walk… My little bitty life works for me. —Amie McNee, writer and artist

I wondered if life in small bites is like tesserae and when one lays them down, they form a complete picture of one’s existence in that day, that week, that month.

(last week’s tesserae - including a little mosaic square of terracotta, post-storm)

So now that I’m lying on the bed, covered by a warm rug, and gazing outside as dusk bleeds blush apricot and flesh pink across the western sky, I think of my week as small bites. Yesterday, I had a dental repair, and after an hour in the chair and being waterboarded as the dentist worked away, I moved onto the next little bite, sans lipstick, with mouth sagging to one side after a needle and with many more mouth creases than when I arrived in the dentist’s chair. I went to the supermarket with a small list as I had no food in the townhouse and purchased just enough for me to eat – small bites if you will.

I hadn’t seen Pups for 2 days and nights when I returned to the coast. He stayed here at the cottage with my husband.

He apparently went into a little decline which gave my heart a perverse thrill. I’ve often wondered if we had made a soul connection, Pups and I. I grieved (and still grieve) for the Late Terrier, and there was a concern that I might not be letting the puppy in.

I rub his back and he looks at me and then takes my wrist in his mouth and holds it. A small (biteless) bite. Is he telling me to leave him alone? Or is he telling me that I am his and vice versa? Or is it a precursor to aggression? I haven’t a clue except to say there’s no wild, whale eye which often presages something negative in dogs. I prefer to think of it as a small gesture of trust.

We celebrated my return with a short walk along the little beach that had been his puppy domain, and he remembered. Digging into the shellgrit (the beach is called Shelly for a reason), being teased by seagulls (they fly away from him, floating on the water just out of his range as he’s yet to find confidence in swimming) and sniffing the detritus of last week’s massive storm. There’s a smashed fibreglass dinghy hauled up in the sags, the sags themselves flattened as if a giant roller had trundled through, and new rock ledges have been revealed. The shellgrit is pulverised to a chicken’s delight and I search for tiny treasure. I find so many shades of fragmented blue shells that I could actually make a mosaic with the pieces.

A bunker boathouse has had its entrance dug out from an overload of sand. The roll-a-door is removed, no doubt bashed right in by the breakers. Steps down to the beach have had stones placed beneath them so the beach can be accessed. There’s a magnificent power in the sea that should always be respected. I find that like the heavens at night, it has the capacity to remove all sense of ego, reducing me to the size of a tiny spot. It’s a good lesson…

Earlier in the week, we had climbed down a cliff with my grandson to the pirate beach, but it was wasted energy as there’s nothing left on the shore.

The pummelling waves had dragged the sand away and revealed all the boulders beneath. This happens every few years and then, as if it remembers the beauty of that azure and white shoreline, so the sea returns what it dragged away. Like life though, it takes time.

The pirate beach, in case you’re wondering is/was a Jack Sparrow haunt for my pre-school grandson at the time. Cap’n Jack would leave a treasure map for the young lad so that he could find chocolate coins somewhere on the beach. Now at nearly seven, it’s all about the size of the rocks and the physics of balancing cairns, of searching for the right sort of sticks and stones (and isn’t that a metaphor for life?).

Other bites of the week:

The Red Thread achieved first place in the OZMA Awards run by Chanticleer . I may have mentioned this but the competition in the fantasy section was huge – the biggest I’ve ever seen. When the novel made it to the Finals, I honestly thought that would be that and I was delighted to have come that far. I never have big expectations of anything. And then this morning when I opened my first email, it was from Chanticleer, informing of the novel’s success.

It delights me because there’s five books in the The Chronicles of Eirie and two have won exceptional awards. A Thousand Glass Flowers (Book Three of the series) won a silver medallion from Readers Favorites a number of years ago. And now this. But there’s a deeper pleasure too, because my late father inspired me with his love of Asian culture, myth and philosophy. I suspect he would have been quite tickled about this.

I owe huge thanks to my UK editor, John Hudspith. John has been with me through many stories and I’m always confident that if my stories have guts, John will coach a polished novel from me. In addition, I owe Jane Dixon-Smith a debt for the perfect cover she designed to blend with the other four books in the series.

And so to celebrate, my husband raced off to the local coffee shop and purchased two hot chocolates with marshmallows (it was freezing here this morning) and my favourite biscuit (Florentine). See? Only small bites. No guzzling champagne here.

We sat, the autumn sun sparkling between the blush and glow of the trees. I took that moment and revelled in it. A moment of excitement, of thrills that my book had earned its place. My little pup lay across my feet, waiting for a piece of the Florentine. The birds flicked through the silverbirch, shaking the seeds down from the branches in a shower of gold. Small bites of joy. Were they like tesserae? As we move toward a national and perhaps watershed election this Saturday, I choose to turn away from worry and strife and think about the ballet, Romeo and Juliet, that I’ll attend on Saturday night. Another piece of the mosaic of my life falling into place.

Music? This. It’s autumn…