1. Light and Smoke

I wake earlier these morning. It's dark at 4am; and the quiet I have always loved to write in seems very noisy.

I move to my kitchen and light a stick of Santo Palo.

As I use my breath to fuel the reddened embers and note the steady stream of fluid smoke lifting.... I take a turn about my house and name what I so fortunate to have.

'Couch = rest.....'

'Fridge = nourishment....'

'Balcony = access .... to the outdoors...'

when i come to my bed I note a creeping desire .

'Bed = passion.... touch..... sex.....'

this not the actual state of things at this time for me as a single  woman. But i let the smoke tussle with the folds of my sheets.It is good to think on 'one day'. I am not defeatist. I believe in future.

When I step out in baseball cap, I am invincible.

And then the autumn chill, the crinkling of golden leaves and the whispering sunlight. My heart aches. How nature undoes me.

How it puts me back together.

My morning walk holds me to the present. I cannot escape how beautiful the light is

...... nor the heaving thump of my healthy heart,

...... nor

how welcome 

the faces of strangers are.

3. Dating

There is a beautiful piece of writing that notes the discrepancy between how we value certain relationships over others.

The writer states 'I want friendship to be seen as a form of romance.

I want

monuments and holidays and certificates and ceremonies to commemorate friendship'

I organise online dates with my friends as delicately as the pen that scribes their names into my diary.

'Ulla....Thursday....chai'

'Jo..... Saturday..... dinner'

And we sit looking at each others faces from our seperate homes ......and we woo each other with the intimate intricacies of our now lives.

And I am grateful for the cantor and confused clarity which seals our connection.

Who are you all that initiate these generous offerings.... palms open ready to give.....?

I appreciate so fully these acts.

~ My yoga teachers on line at 6am and 8.30am with live, free meditations and a reminder to exhale and language powers perspective:

~ To my neighbours who recently greeted me from behind a fly screen remembering that I am a teacher and that maybe I need support right now where I am supporting so many.

'Curry is coming' they said. And I could smell a spicy stew streaming from the hot plates in their apartment. 'Some fo that is for you'

~ And still, they are there. Those artists who have lost everything. Turning up on feeds with their poetry and their music and their plays.

And we must donate as generously as they continue to create.

5. Continuing Creativity

Creativity bring momentum.

It is a flourishing.

A palm of petals unfolding.

A land lit up by lighting.

Though I grieve project paused by the pandemic, I continue to prepare for those not yet cancelled (others believe in a  future it seems here too).

I continue to move forward....

and sometimes sideways.

I continue to open.

Making helps me to do this. And so I am composing next community panel discussions, next workshops for students, next poems, ..... next hems on dresses I've been meaning to take up.....

And he novel that has sat in me since I was a child awaiting a life material. She has arrived and I am turning up to greet her.

How I Go to the Woods

Ordinarily I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers ad therefore unsuitable.

I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying as you no doubt have yours.

Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible, I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unbearable sound of the roses singing.

If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.

By Mary Oliver.

I have come back to this poem time and time again these last few years.

It is a favourite.

I have always enjoyed the company of nature. And I am well versed in solitude, appreciating since I was a child, time to reflect and imagine and come home.

Marrying this poem with sentiments Bjork also expressed in her song 'Unison', what adoration there must to invite another into these private lives we have.....these private spaces we carve out for ourselves.....

But where does such a poem sit now? When 'alone' is so weighted. When 'invisible'  too close a disappearing act we are all so afraid loved ones will do.

Perhaps I come back to it now because I appreciate so greatly an intelligence I have practiced these almost 40 years; I am my own great company; because I so greatly appreciate the natural world at this time; and because the image of thickened woods now brings to mind a more archetypal journey that we are all alone and together in traversing. And I think to those I have shared such landscapes with. And those I choose to have with me (to check in with, to walk beside as my plus 1 in an age where we are restricted to 2) and ...... i note, I most love them very much.

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