#278 - 265: Stock Take*

Magritte - Empire of Light (1967)

I am now 10 entries in credit for my blog. My promise to write one post every day has come through. My promise to listen to new music also has come through. My promise to write a short story - one short story every month is also panning out. I am writing three entries on average a week.

It is the autumnal equinox - equal day and night. From now on, the darkness begins to overpower the light until my birthday - so it is, in a sense, a countdown to my birthday, the winter solstice.

Everything is exactly the way it should be, the way it should always be.

Always.

I had such great conversations with Prema, we talked about Hindu philosophy and ancient literature and we talked about the journeys we made. Prem was so candid about her regrets and so honest about her learnings. She is sort of my older sister really. When I think about it, I don't really have an older sister. I suppose I used to in the past, but these have fallen by the wayside. Most of my friends are either my age or younger. I have very few older female friends. I have older MALE friends, but not female friends.

There are small victories. All we can do is make a promise to ourselves and see what pans out. I no longer have this 'heroic' ideal - this idea of heroic action. Things are small and organic and authentic. I don't know what else to say about this. I think that is probably the biggest change in myself. I no longer want to lead an extraordinary life in a conscious manner because I know that each life is extraordinary, and each life is unique and as long as we live our truth as carefully and as courageously as possible, that life will be extraordinary. If only we could have that given to us at the earliest age. The story which we all know when we were young, when we were born - that we are all connected, we are all beholden to each other, we are all meant to led our own lives, and that those lives will in every single which way be extraordinary. That life will be meant to be what it is and in doing so, we will become who we were meant to be, someone who fulfills another strand, another sliver, another weaving in the story of the universe.

I have much to do.

Housework
Dinner
Lesson Prep
Planning the Week
Tidying Up

All the tiny tendrils and the larger tendrils that women must do in order to keep the stream, the rivers flowing. Clearing small and large things.

So I need to decide the order and just do it.

I will do planning first, although my head is so fuzzy, it may be a better idea to do Housework first...

Sundays are strange. This one began with rain - rain falling on the glass window of the bedroom, making that dancing splatter which rain can only do, a drumming of delicate wet finger tips against resistant air. It rained for most of the morning, then it gradually misted over into a damp misty fog. Despite all that rain, it was warm, and the warmth was held in the invisible waters that pressed against us, absorbing everything, including now, the fading daylight, exuding a kind of silence which seemed alive; a presence, standing in the garden, in the evening that drew in, looking up at the skies, with its closed eyes. Inhaling the ashy rosy tint that infused the clouds, making them seem closer than they were.

In this most intimate part of the week, as we lay down the foundations for the next seven days, contemplation and routine merge with the varietals of time, and the lamps and candles become brighter and brighter. Our rooms take on a glow which spill out onto the streets eventually transforming each glowing box into a beacon in the night. Magic boxes in which lives are led, can be glimpsed at as a dog is walked or an errand run. Sometimes lovers walk, hand in hand, oblivious of the stirrings enclosed within the walls. Absorbed with each other, no one could possibly happier than they, and therefore everyone is worthy of pity and compassion. Being in love makes you both selfish and generous - the gift that overruns every cup yet which cannot be shared. Not really.

In the third act of the evening, which is the Darkness of Night, we curl into ourselves. Sometimes fires are lit, meals are served, music plays. TVs flicker their unearthly bluish glare that plays like a modern day camp fire against our glassy, gently blinking eyes. We are entranced by the entertainments brought into the comfort of our front rooms and laugh, weep, stare, nod off...

It is like that, the falling of a Sunday. Every Sunday. The Sundays that are bathed in silences, in peace, folded over with rest. Sundays which, if you were lucky, you could borrow from the treasure chest of a life.