#284 - Saturday musings

It has taken me all of this afternoon and evening to get chilled and back to the computer. I feel better. Good. Stronger. Not strong. I don't aim for strong any more - just stronger. As i wrote that I no longer had the overwhelming urge to be the bestest and brightest. I have had enough of that shit. What was I watching? Yes, I was watching Madonna and her evolution over the years. How she was such an inspiration, and icon, she owed her sexuality. She was someone who came to prominence by not being afraid of the raw power in a woman. Especially a young woman and because she had to be that overwhelmingly sexual and beautiful woman, her aging has been something tragic to see. Instead of embracing cronehood, she has continued to contort herself like some Empress Dowager, attempting to imagine she is still something exciting. I think that it is possible to still be excited as an older woman, but not in the same way a 20 something is excited. Why would that be? Why would I want to return to being 20 or 30 or 40 something? I hated being a teenager, and was so glad to be rid of that phase of my life. I say goodbye to those other parts where I was seen by the world to be desirable and young. 

It is a terrible trap - to be limed into trying to stay that way. It is just not possible. The face falls, any attempt to defy gravity results in a hardness, a strange plasticity. The face is not flawless and dewy but hard, like wood. And the make up the arches, appear more and more like plaster as they cover up the reviled skin. How this looks better than the lines of age I do not understand. 

Today I built a shelter. There is something quite powerful in that process. The lashing of knots and the putting up of poles. The covering over with blankets and cushions and pillows. There is something quite reassuring in the creation of a place, a space, your own nest, in the middle of nowhere. And to think that once upon a time we knew how to do this. I have seen the forest people of Indonesia put up a house without the use of a single nail. It is very empowering.

The shelter will be even better the next time we attempt it.

So, here we head towards a new year. We plunge into the darkness. I am prepared for this. For this I have worked and lived and now, now we are alive once more. Everything dances. The unseen is seen and possibilities are spun round, let lose, they become reality. 

The truth is I have nothing to prove anymore. Say if tomorrow I died, I would have died happy. I would have died having done so very much and I would have done so many things which have made me so happy. I would have been happy with my two beautiful sons, the work I have done, the things I have learnt. I would have loved so thoroughly in every part of my life. Every gasket blown and blasted. Every shape created and destroyed. I would have done enough and done even more... I would have answered all those questions which I had asked to my own satisfaction. I would have been honest, searingly honest, and been honest about my regrets. 

I suddenly saw myself walking in Guildhall Square in Derry. I have to admit I didn't realise exactly how historic the place was. But then I had just arrived... and Derry. I do love Derry. It has it's own weirdness, but looking back, it has been such a ride.

I would later find myself trudging about Belfast in the driving rain, and thinking that if someone told me ten years ago I would end up in Belfast working for a conservation organisation with two sons, I would have laughed at them. And so I continued with the journey.

I cannot, I really absolutely cannot complain. I have done everything I have ever wanted to do. If the scope of my imagination is this limited, so sue me, but what history has taught me is that no matter what or where we are, we are blessed as human beings. As Ghin said today in the car as we waited for pizza, it's crazy, how can any of this be real? I agree. I can't believe any of this is real.

I was recently walking to Gabriel and said to her, you know, I think about dying a lot... which I do... and sometimes when I attend funerals, I think, yeah that was a good funeral, I would like that to happen for me...and sometimes I think that was a terrible funeral. That is definitely not how I would like to go. To that end, I have a funeral playlist. And an idea of what my funeral should be like. I have to say the attraction of just dying on my own is very attractive.

In Keri Hulme's the Bone People. she 'dies' on her own after being poisoned by a crab or something... she doesn't really die, but she is very close to death. She is on a beach, in the sun, and she can hear the surf, she feels light and she believe she is about to die... and she then... disappears... I read that and thought, yeah. I'd love to die like that. Sort of in a hut. on my own, in the sun, listening to the surf. The sea is warm and the stars and plenty... and I am dying on my own and it feels true. I don't need a ritual for something like that.

I wonder what will my death be like? How will I die?

I have arrived here and I am no longer afraid to die. That said, I don't think I have ever been afraid to die.

Clearly.

Takut mati. It is a phrase I have lived with all my life. My mom would say that when we encountered someone who was a bit paranoid. Dia Takut Mati. He is afraid to die. They are afraid to die. That's what makes them act so crazy. As if being afraid to die was a stupid thing. The implication of course was, you shouldn't be afraid to die. Death was is part of life. 

These little nonya phrases have always made sure things were kept real.

Jatuhkan dia mia jiho - To let disgrace your family name

Tak speka - To be quite rubbish, not do something well

Chelaka - To be the bringer of bad luck

There are parts of my soul which have no truck with Western sensibility

They are mostly spoken in Malay or Nonya Patuah.

If I am totally honest there are three things which I really need to do before I die. And they have nothing to do with travelling to places nor seeing works of art. I have done as much of these things as I need to do. I would stand in front of a work of art any day of the week and travel at the drop of a hat, but the things which I am really going to have to do before I die are accomplishments which are personal.

First: become a published writer. This this end I must write everyday for a couple of hourse.

Second: fit into all my clothes again and achieve a certain level of fitness. So I must over the next four months exercise and eat well,

Third: run a successful Forest School

The Forest and Garden School is essentially all of my life compressed really nicely into this tree shaped enterprise. Also I think I may join a choir if this Covid thing ever ends. Cos I have no confidence with my singing at all.

That and maybee... I will take up swimming in the sea here.