#305 - Tough

This has been a tough week. Impossible. I attended the third funeral in four months on Wednesday. It seems like this is something which will be part of my life now as people slip away. My head is numb. Everything is numb. We played the handbells in class. It was therapeutic and very funny. There was some laughing to be had. We learned a little of how to write music. We did some algebra. Next week we do the human body. 

So time passeth. Life goes on and we are carried along the current. On Wednesday I had never known time to pass so slowly, not even in airport waiting lounges which are certainly the worst place in the world. It has been a long time since I had been confined in a room with relative strangers waiting for something which I had no idea of when it would happen. I think the last time that happened I was in Harapan. I learned to just not do anything. Enjoy the flow of time and we were unmoving stones or rocks upon which time did little work on. I wasn't prepared for that. I did find it impossible to just sit still. And yet, that is what we do as long as we hurtle about the planet - sit still.

I find small talk painful in the extreme. Is this all it is? Small talk. I have forgotten how to do it. The people I see daily I see them. As a teacher we don't do small talk... and yet.

Yesterday I did painting with class One. They were so cute. I had forgotten how simple things were with them. I showed the four of them how to paint using watercolour and then after that we sat and looked and admired each other's paintings. This is how we nurture the imagination. I see gold rings - a giant's gold rings... and this one is a human's... I see a sandstorm or a furnace... I see stars... I see the light sparkling on the water... I see a beehive with honey in it... I know I am lucky I to get to teach this way. 

And yet, what IS it all about? All week I have been weaving a basket to capture the authenticity of life. That we are able to hold each other... reminding each other about the beauty and the pleasure of life and at the same time being true to what has happened. 

What is interesting is there is a desire to come to simple solutions. Like God is the answer. I have said many times that God is not always the answer. The answer is often something more practical. Saying that Jesus Love You is almost a cop out for people going through these dark nights. It puts the responsibility on the person. But that is only possible AFTER they have been assisted as much as possible. Often God is not the answer. Often the answer requires those around the person who is suffering to take some responsibility. Or be supported in doing so.

I think that being lost is a common thread. So lost that we cannot find a place, a space and if we become so lost that we cannot find the way back, we end up finding solutions which appear to be viable. It is a place which the mind recoils from. Like standing on top of a zipline. Every instinct battling against the natural inclination to not do this.

I am now almost 50 years old. Honestly did not think I would feel so worn out at this stage. This I was not prepared for. There are few milestones for exhaustion which I have crossed and never looked back. The exhaustion of pregnancy. I have never really recovered from that. The exhaustion of parenthood. Not that neither. The exhaustion of teaching. I am constantly depleted. And finally, now this, for the first time I feel exhausted because of age. I have never ever attributed exhaustion to getting older and yet, here it is.

I also have not had any of my vitamins for the week, that may have something to do with it. My Vit C, magnesium, flaxseed oil, blackthorn elixir and finally the artichoke and nettle tincture.

I took some today. But this whole week the sense of ennui has been terrible. I'm going to have to do something about it when I get home after Forest School today - if there even IF a Forest School today.

It is good to write. Really good. How do people live without writing? It is impossible. To give structure to your thoughts, to get something down, to create meaning... how else can this be done? How do people organise their thoughts otherwise?

Right... I'm heading to the shed to sort the sheet out. Yesterday David rotavated the grass. Planted the yellow rattle. Here we look forward to the spring. The beginning at the beginning of everything.