100 Day Project - Day Fifty Nine

Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences

Sylvia Plath

Inspired by a writer’s residency last week to resurrect some ideas for a book that I put into a mental lockbox about 12 years ago, I find I’m actually looking forward to writing again - even in my journal - in a way I haven’t for ages.

Of course, it’s a long way from here to there, but... it’s created this tingle under my skin and a buzz in my head. I’m quite enjoying that feeling.

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Nine

I grew up surrounded by the love of my aunts and I feel their strong guiding presence every day, even now. They all offered me something different and special and I‘m so thankful for those particular relationships, each unlike any other.

Now, being an aunt myself (to those related by blood and a few who are family of my heart) is one of my favourite and most fulfilling things in life.

Right now, I’m loving that I have a few days sharing the same shores with these little feet and I hope they know that, even when there are oceans between us, I’ll always be beside them too. No matter what.

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Eight

Even after all these years of doing it, it still amazes me when I get into a large tin can with a couple of hundred other people, travel for 8-10 hours, land on the other side of the globe, and step out into a world so different from the one I left behind.

Every time, without fail, it feels like magic!

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Seven

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Six

There’s something especially delicious about a Sunday on a Bank Holiday weekend. I’m working and trying to figure out a mega packing schedule for the next few weeks (which is really challenging my organising skills!) and, even so, it feels like a more commodious day because there is still tomorrow to come… we’re right in the middle of the three-day weekend sandwich. Delicious.

Really, I think we should be having three-day weekends every week! What benefit do we enjoy from all this increased productivity because of amazing technologies if we’re not getting back this time? I’m lucky because I’m not as tied into the five-working-days rhythm as some, but my clients are and there’s a limit to the extent I can opt out of it. So I, along with working stiffs everywhere, love, love, love an officially sanctioned long weekend. Especially when the sun shines.

We might even squeeze in a matinee movie, or some art-play, or a random nap in the garden swing. Fancy that.

“Sunday, the day for the language of leisure.” ~ Elfriede Jelinek

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Five

Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart... live in the question.

Rainer Maria Rilke

You can't lie to your soul.

Irvine Welsh

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Four

We are our choices.

Jean-Paul Sartre

I really love having options. Lots of paths to explore, a variety of things to do, choices to make from lots of possibilities. It’s one of the things that makes life juicy for me. I’m definitely a “variety is the spice of life” sorta girl.

This week I’ve been wondering if, even for me, there’s such a thing as too many choices, too much variety? I don’t know definitively. I’m mulling on it.

It’s not just about the freedom to choose but that it seems to me, being properly able to exercise that freedom requires options to choose from. No options, or only two, doesn’t seem right to me. I don’t want to live in a binary world. It would arguably be far easier to live in a simpler situation. Many alternatives bring challenges, for sure. But what would I lose without them? Diversity & complexity equate to richness for me.

So, I guess when I consider the alternative, less is not more for me.

Back into the messy, too-many-options fray I go then…

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Three

Trust your heart if the seas catch fire,

live by love though the stars walk backward.

e. e. cummings

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

Ted Hughes

Your heart is not wrong. Your heart is your strength. You don't have to be ashamed.

Laini Taylor, Days of Blood & Starlight

Her heart is smashed glass. Peer into her jagged edges to see what refracts from the light of her past. Kaleidoscopic beauty.

Curtis Tyrone Jones

I have matters of the heart on my mind today. Reminding myself that being heart-driven, even when heart-weary or even-heart-broken, is really the only way for me and that’s okay. I find I am not alone in this:

100 Day Project - Day Thirty Two

True for the very introverted. True for me.

100 Day Project - Day Thirty One

"Butterflies are not insects," Captain John Sterling said soberly. "They are self-propelled flowers."

Robert A. Heinlein

Remember to look up. Even in a stairwell. You never know when you might find yourself swept up in a cloud of giant moths and butterflies.

100 Day Project - Day Thirty

…and everything burned in blue, everything a star

Pablo Neruda

Fire; element of creation, transformation and destruction. I'm a redhead (with trademark fiery temperament), a Sagittarian (a fire sign, described as spontaneous, intuitive and passionate) and, in Chinese astrology, a Fire Horse (apparently the most unconventional, freedom-loving and adventurous of the Horse types).

Whether one sets store by these things or not, I feel that I embody something of all those things so it’s hardly surprising that I have an affinity for this element. Hardly surprising that I have to be careful not to consume myself or others with it. Hardly surprising that I have to pay attention to what my fire needs to keep burning. If it dies, I die.

When I was younger, my fire raged often un-controlled and the line between impulse and recklessness was not always well-managed. It could be wild and damaging. These days, I experience it less as wildfire and more as deeply flowing molten lava. Sometimes it erupts (and that can still be scary) but mostly it’s well contained below the surface.

I like to think that over time I’ve learnt some of the wisdom of the other elements and I also benefit from being surrounded by lovely people who bring balance to my world with their different elemental mojo. Earth grounds me in the tangible, here and now; Air brings breath to inspire thinking and perception; Water cools and enhances the emotional ebb and flow. But at the core, fire is my thing.

At the risk of suggesting I have leanings towards pyromania (I don’t) I do love a fire related ritual. They’re great for both letting go and setting intentions, releasing and igniting, in equal measure… Also great for just staring into. This photograph was taken sitting around the firepit at a friend’s house on the first warmish evening of the season and I love that, with the addition of some magic pinecones, we were able to transform the flames into this beautiful colour. Turquoise flame. Magical & meaningful for me.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Nine

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness.

Rollo May, The Courage to Create

So, I'm now eleventytwo days behind. The schedule shot to smithereens. But here I am, today. Here we are. The world keeps turning. Days come and go. Sometimes in a blur of busyness and sometimes in a drag of ennui. They come and go regardless.

I’m torn between finding that reassuring and desperately wanting to hit the universal pause button so that I can catch up with myself. Of course, that’s not an option and most of the maelstrom I experience is internal. My life is no more this than anyone else’s, despite what it sometimes feels like, so it’s about finding the space to pause neck-deep in the river of my life and take a deep breath. Catch my breath. When I remember to look up and out, or wade out to the bank, even for a moment, I’m better able to do that. Even better if I take a moment to snap where I am in that moment. Ground myself, literally. Now if I could just remember to do that more often.

Anyway, here I am, today. Here we are.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Eight

The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.

Kate Chopin

I love seahorses. Always have. This little guy was enjoying the sunshine through the window today. It made him sparkle.

Their symbolic meaning is apparently quite intricate, and several cultures consider them extremely magical and lucky.

The Ancient Greeks believed that the seahorse was connected to Poseidon, the god of the sea, earthquakes and horses. For them, they represented strength and power. European alchemists thought the seahorse was the carrier of souls into the underworld and in this worldview, they ensured safe passage, especially for sailors. The Chinese believed them to be sea-dragons, so they were revered for their power and thought to be symbols of good luck. In some Celtic circles, the seahorse represents fatherhood, as it is the male seahorse that gives birth.

Associated with the water element, they have been connected to perception, awareness, the subconscious, intuition, mysteries of the self, compassion and family. They’ve come to represent patience, contentment, and protection.
~
They can also be associated with the notion of staying true to one's self, as they are strange but graceful swimmers that do not need to change who they are to adapt to their environment.

I love seahorses. Always have. This little guy reminds me of that.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Seven

This is about the time I normally drop out of this 100 day challenge because I’ve not been able to post for the past few days (working, travelling and a little overwhelmed) so now I’m “behind”. Arrgh!

I had a bit of a debate with myself about it. ThreePointTwo options up for consideration: 1) abandon it. 2) pick up where I left off and just carry on, so I’ll end a few days later than anticipated and it won’t be 100 consecutive days. 3) pick up again but fast-forward the numbers so that I’m ostensibly still in-step with the rest who all started on the same day AND I’m not reminded every day how behind I am, and then a) add a few days on the end so that it becomes the 105 day challenge for me or b) just pretend that those days didn’t exist so the end result will be 95 posts.

None of these feels particularly good because I’m already disappointed with myself that I lost traction. Easiest option is 1 but will giving up altogether (again!) feel worse? I think it will. So, strike option 1 and start again, cogitating on options 2, 3a and 3b…

As you can tell from the number on this post, I’ve gone for option 2. I’ve also lost two extra days just going ‘round and ‘round in circles on it!

This whole process is pretty indicative of the sort of over-thinking I do for everything. What a lot of [wasted] energy.

But, in these two days, I did encounter a nice field of tiny daises and I enjoyed crawling around in it for a while. In the sunshine. So there is that.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Six

Some days.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Five

Sesame seed tear. Not sure how long it was there before I noticed it. Not sure how it landed or what it was crying for. But it felt like it belonged.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Four

Sometimes, the more going on inside both my head and heart, the quieter & more composed I become on the outside.

Suppression? Sublimation? Yes, and yes. Inside there’s a volcano at play. Outside, I appear as a vault.

Balanced? No.

I have thoughts on the subject of balance. Lots of thoughts. Whirling thoughts. But for now… I’m gathering them. Quietly.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Three

Meditating and musing today on shadow, and wholeness, and magic in the everyday. And these guys sum it up so much more elegantly than I...

“No matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere.” - Haruki Murakami

“We wait, starving for moments of high magic to inspire us, but life is full of common enchantment waiting for our alchemist’s eyes to notice.” - Jacob Nordby

“And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”
- Pablo Neruda

100 Day Project - Day Twenty Two

Message for the weekend. Most welcome.

100 Day Project - Day Twenty One

The magic in new beginnings is truly the most powerful of them all.

Josiyah Martin

I relate to this. Intellectually and pragmatically I understand the need for all the phases (and dare say I can do them) but energetically, I do love me a beginning! This includes the quiet embryonic time before something tangible emerges; the germination, the incubation... love it. My life’s work is about potential and helping others to unlock theirs. For me, that’s where the magic lives first… in the acorn, in the chrysalis, in the egg. No good if it just stays there forever of course, but it always amazes me how the whole incredible thing, whatever it ends up becoming, is locked up in an often non-descript wrapping.

And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.

Meister Eckhart

Once the thing actually starts to emerge, I like to create a sense of ongoing “beginning” by taking an organic approach to how it grows and develops and allow for some surprises.

With ideas, if I don’t attach myself too much to an outcome, a specific plan, or a need to know exactly what’s coming, when and how, then I can sense and respond as the thing unfolds. It’s how I get through it. If things are too clearly mapped out and it leaves no room for the unexpected, I find it hard to stay as interested or focused. I love the idea that just around the corner there might be something I haven’t anticipated. Not something in the form of a monster that’s going to gobble down the thing and me and spit out our bones, of course, but something that adds to it in a way I’d not imagined.

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.

Rosalie de Castro

Having said that it’s also true that like any other freshly hatched thing, something new is vulnerable and can be easily squashed and can be easily squashed if it’s left exposed and unprotected. I’ve suffered the effects in the past of sharing too soon or letting an idea loose into the world without due care and having the life stamped out of it by criticism and negativity from others. It’s a tricky dance. And a beautiful cycle.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

Anaïs Nin