Alter-ego: Reclusive Rae

Rae

Characteristics:* reserved, introspective, sensitive, kind, eccentric

Life with Rae:* spends her days listening to good music and drinking herbal tea. She works from home - writes novels for a living and poetry for pleasure. Her home overlooks the ocean and is full of light and warmth. She has a beautiful, albeit slightly wild garden, where she grows herbs and plants that are chosen for their flowers and scent. At the bottom of the garden there is a beehive that produces honey for her tea and toast. She shares her home with a Tabby cat, a golden Labrador Retriever and a miniature Daschund. 

Rae wears long, flowing layers in worn, faded cottons and soft, sea and coral colours; pretty shoes and sandals (although she prefers to be barefoot); flannel pyjamas, with warm socks and baggy sweaters in the cooler months. She doesn’t have a telephone, but corresponds with friends and family across the globe via e-mail and in long, rambling hand-written letters. Rae is most comfortable in her own company, or with one or two loved ones (who prevent her from becoming a complete hermit), and spends as much time alone as she is able to. She seeks little or no contact with the outside world except virtually and is happy to conduct all business via the internet. She reads voraciously, watches a lot of DVDs, and has her locally purchased groceries delivered to avoid having to leave home. Deeply connected to the sea, she swims every day, can often be found walking the beach, collecting shells, sitting on the sand gazing out at the horizon, or watching the dogs play in the surf from the swing-seat on her verandah. 

Rae is very environmentally conscious - rides a bicycle into the small local village to go to the library and for the occasional tea or lunch with friends, and recycles as much as possible. She spends her holidays volunteering on a turtle-breeding project, doing research in a marine wildlife sanctuary, or teaching on an adult literacy programme. She loves the smell of summer rains and the sound of the waves at night. She is content.

When she does leave home, Rae carries a passport in another name.

Rae's favourite quotations:*

Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.

Paul Hawken

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

The Dalai Lama

for whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

e.e. cummings

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us
Virginia Woolf

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.
William Wordsworth

Rae is the quietest, gentlest and recently most neglected of my alter-egos (and also the final one in this exploration) and although she doesn't complain too loudly, when Rae's sad, everyone feels it. This weekend we are going to give her a bit of what she needs. And soon (in a few weeks time) we will take her to the sea for a bit of soulfood...

[Flickr credits]