Half Sick of Shadows

I’ve had lots of shadowy ideas lately but nothing that grabs. The idea for this blog flashed into my head a few weeks ago as I pushed Diaz , my grandson , along the back of the old Woolstores in Fremantle… Pondering once again about life and it’s different manifestations. The shadowy patterns of past and now moving slowly through my mind . Hence the title . I looked up to be confronted by the graffitied messages and posted adverts on the old walls.

Be happy , mostly

I thought about my other grandchild walking cautiously on the “ rubbery “ sand at the beach last summer. Her description. An apt description of life at times : caution and uncertainty. The under layer , whatever is underfoot, is precarious. Yet we are constantly moving towards an expected happiness. All around are messages of how to be happy: excercise , eat well, meditate, be mindful , buy.

The walls which face me proclaim :Be happy. Be happy, this way to happiness. The dark , conflict -suffused graffiti serves to highlight dire alternatives.

We went to the library later as it started to rain . The same message on some of the shelves.

Like we need a formula for happiness

As if happiness is assured and life equates with happiness . Three year old Ava got it right, I think : Life is rubbery and needs to be walked with caution as the rubber has degrees of thickness , sometimes it’s perished so you can fall through, sometimes the halves are linked by a thin thread. But if you’re lucky , or careful maybe, you can walk on the thick bits and be content for a while.

You’ve got it right , Ava .

Journeying : A Beginning

Sunrise from train window

We’re heading towards Balmasete , via Bilbao Northern Spain. Thoughts not just of the walk ahead ( Too hard this time ? Are we up to the long days and heat , or cold? Maybe I shouldn’t have ditched thermals) . Looking out the train window at the shadowy mountains, another realisation of why we Camino.

I’m on my way to a new path. The pack on my back is all I have for the 2/3/4 weeks of walking . People, familiar places, obligations and jobs have gone . The way ahead is uncertain , unknown . A contrast to my home life whose trajectory is relatively predictable, and brief. On the path it seems like time has expanded, that the future is open ended, possibilities emerging : nebulous and unshaped, but they are waiting for me .

Boarding train from San Martin
Let the journey begin . Buena Suerte

There’s nothing so ? As the Leaving .

Or words to that effect. And spring is showing its face this morning as I walk along the river .

Lemons for the taking

For ages , it seems , days have dragged drearily and greyly on ( In our short winter ? ) Each day is grey, rain falls, it’s cold and we’re rugged up. Not true really. But this sunshine and flowering appears and life is wonderful . Why am I leaving this brightness, the wide spaces and clear water ?

My garden is coming alive too . I spotted a poppy amongst the forest of tall nearly flowering, sunflowers

I’ve been weeding , and planting cuttings that have been lying around for ages. Do I want to to pull a muscle again 2 weeks before departure? Inside the house we are moving stuff around, taking the unwanted to the Resource Center and various Op shops., and binning. Used / beautiful ? Neither, and it’s gone . All laudable , except we are also juggling remains around to create new liveable spaces . We won’t be here for quite a while , so why ? Cleaning , tidying , sorting; the stuff of life. And re creating and affirming possession .

Is this a sort of “ I’ll leave everything in place in case … “ Anne Patchett has confessed to leaving stickers on her current piece of writing so that a designated person can carry the story , and she maintains that her close writing friends do likewise. Well I’m not so sure about the worthiness of my writing, but I have definitely sorted , culled, copied . And one of the stresses is completing a few pieces before that cut off point of departure .

I guess we need to leave in order to recognise the wonder we already have. There is also, I suspect , a little voice which gets louder as we age , trying to keep us where we are mentally as well as physically . The reluctance may be another strategy to keep us with what we know .

Not just the outside , flowers budding, leaves emerging slowly from dry branches. But once again I like my hotch potch decor, the startling colours on walls, the mismatching furniture , the inefficient corners , even the rafters on the top floor I regularly trip over and Robbie’s jarrah staircase which we have to use many times a day. Slowly walking with hands on the wall . But the light streams in . .

If the beauty doesn’t pull me back from thoughts of another place and another reality, my body attacks with sprains and blisters and newly discovered wrongneses. Then there’s the usual tugs of family : x needs me .

Poor George
What’s my foot doing here ?
Love you Díaz

But I’ll ride all this . After all stuff will still be here tomorrow , or whenever I return . Adventure won’t be . Time and Tide wait for nobody

Ha writing room will still be here