Fully Engaged
Posted on | April 8, 2010 | 1 Comment
I have engaged in the battle — truly. But after months of nibbling at the ELEPHANT that is my staggeringly large mound of possessions to purge myself of, I find myself with weak knees some days realising just how much MORE there is to shift out of our house, our studio, and our two horse barns.
Perhaps the cooler and rainier days will keep me tucked up inside simply staring at the problem and I will stay enthused about the lightening-up process. Just this past week I have strengthened the savings account a smidgeon and freshened up one tiny segment of my office with the help of both Ebay (bless them) and the bored shoppers who were trapped in the house in front of their computers over the long Easter weekend.
This week it is BAGS–BAGS–BAGS on sale and I would like to know just HOW in the world we managed to accumulate so many pieces of luggage in the last 15-plus years together!
Just too darned many BAGS!
Out they go and off to some good new home where happy little travellers can board their planes safe in the knowledge that they have saved a bit off the luggage bill and perhaps that will fund a croissant and cafe creme or deux in Paris. (sigh!) Don’t even get me started on how much I would personally love to be back in Paris right now!
And photo editing — I am seriously behind on photo editing. And there are at least three magazine articles to submit proposals for to editors.
So yes — I am fully engaged in life and tasks and sorting and more. But my body feels better already simply due to the downshift in temperatures. Ahhhh!
Now where was that cashmere cardigan to ward off the evening chill? Guess it is time to sort out the closets, too!
Nigella Drove Away — And That’s OK
Posted on | March 26, 2010 | 6 Comments
Yes — Nigella drove away — and that’s OK. 
Part of the ongoing purge process has been facing some personal truths about what I would like to do (in theory!) versus what I will actually do — and one of those areas is cooking.
I spent quite a lot of time whipping up just the right this or that when my children were small. They were the focus of my life back then and I was less involved in artistic pursuits like writing or my currently non-stop photography. Perhaps as I got older I also just lost interest in the whole process — period — and I am now perfectly content to eat a quick stir-fry dinner or a salad and something on the side. It’s boring, but it IS fast and healthy!
I’d be willing to bet that I am representative of rather a lot of us who just swoon over some of the cooking shows on television and we long to whip those kinds of recipes up at the drop of the chef’s hat. But reality (or waning interest!) seeps in and many of us realise that we are in love with the IDEA of cooking gourmet meals, but we simply don’t have the time or energy to do that 99% of the time. So those gorgeous, glossy, heavy hardback books sit on the shelf and laugh at us when we never open them.
Deciding that I wanted to be very truthful about interests versus action, I have begun to load cookbook after cookbook onto Ebay along with the last of the unsold dvds which I will never watch again. And I had never imagined how liberating it would feel!
So yes — Nigella drove away. Her cookbook Forever Summer was the very first one to sell this morning and I am thrilled that some lovely people down in Melbourne will (hopefully!) soon be implementing some of the gorgeous recipes within that unused book. Bon Appetit!
One Comes In, One Goes Out
Posted on | March 17, 2010 | No Comments
I’m not sure what category to place this in — birth, death, survival, and everything in-between mortality-wise?
The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur. Yet other than the normal stresses of overseas travel and the odd grumpy client because timelines could not be met, most of it has been quite joyful.
For the “One Comes In” portion of this post, my son Chris and his lovely wife Diane have welcomed a new son, Ryan, into the world — a whopping big baby that was about the size of 3 month old babies back when I was doing the new-mother rounds. And he was just over 2 weeks early. Yikes! But everyone is doing well, his almost 3 year old brother Ian thinks he’s pretty cool, and all of that is a source of joy.
Our “One Goes Out” example was my husband’s beloved grandmother — Nan. I had listened to an inner instinct to book a trip to New Zealand several weeks ago and I’m so accustomed to those psychic nudges that neither I nor my husband questioned it.
A mere few days before departure we learned that she had been raced to the hospital and was not expected to live. But when the surprise factor was wiped away and my husband’s uncle told her to hang on — Mark would be arriving on Friday — she did. And she rallied splendidly so that they had a lovely visit over the next two days and chatted about all kinds of subjects. I am grateful for her nurturing presence in Mark’s life as a child because I truly know that he would not have been the kind-hearted person that he is today without that support and encouragement.
She left this world on Sunday, easing gently out after 96 years and a very full life. Those hours spent sitting around her bed over 3 days had been a celebration of her life and the funeral the following Thursday had the exact same tone — a celebration.
I am up to my eyeballs in catch-up work right now, but I shall endeavour to begin posting more often again.
If there’s one essential message that is transmitted by those moments of birth and death it is this. Do not put things off and think that there will always be time to do, see, be. The advertising execs at Nike knew the power of the phrase when they snagged it as part of their marketing — Just DO It!
We are personally living that message right now and it shall become an unfolding theme in my posts over the next several months.
Selectively Social
Posted on | March 1, 2010 | No Comments
It’s always been a balancing act for me — the decision to be social, to be out and about in society as a greater whole, to mix and mingle with all and sundry. I have decided over the past couple of years that being true to myself regarding these issues instead of allowing myself to be jollied-along with the crowd (ho-ho-ho-what-fun-we’ll-all-have!) is a much wiser choice than to force myself into activities that I have absolutely no interest in whatsoever.
Ah, I’m getting a bit hermit-like then, eh? Well, actually no — I’m not. Both individually and as a couple, we have plenty of social outings each month, but they are done with intent and thus with joy.
My social patterns seem to be a source of curiosity though and are frequently commented on. There have always been people in my life who don’t understand my desire for solitude and wonder why I feel compelled to limit my exposure to crowds and throngs or random encounters. I have never felt the necessity to pop into the village for pointless errands just so I could see someone other than the husband throughout the day. But does that make me eccentric?
This could potentially be the beginning of an essay or two on the joys of solitude and I shall begin by recounting a story from two decades ago.
I was travelling on a train in Europe and I had just left Vienna and was headed for Venice. Happily traipsing around the Continent all by myself, I had never felt miserable or sad or in any way diminished by the lack of a travel partner. On the contrary, I had no one but myself to answer to schedule wise and I hopped on and off of trains in various countries as I saw fit, with no fixed plans, and there was no one else to insist that we go out and get a proper dinner at night if all I wanted to do was sit in the hotel room, decompress, write in my journal, and eat cheese and fruit. I’d been having a delightful time and wasn’t fretting about anything.
But then the retirement aged American couple sat down across from me in the first-class dining car and proceeded to grill me during the entire meal about WHY did I want to travel alone and the woman ended up by pronouncing quite firmly that there was something “not quite right” about wanting to travel around solo without (option #1) a MAN to keep me safe or (option #2) a girlfriend to prevent me from being accosted by “foreign men” who might have dastardly ideas in mind. You would have thought it was 1959 — not 1989!
Carefully prying myself loose as the train arrived in Venice, I waved off their invitation to dinner and made my way to my hotel on the Grand Canal where I had a room with a view overlooking that mosquito filled waterway. I sat in the window composing shot after shot through the viewfinder of my camera and was grateful for the silence.
Nothing has really changed in my life. I do my best writing when I am undisturbed and my best artwork when my flow will not be interrupted. Over the years I have often wondered how some people of an artistic nature — other writers, other painters — manage to ever get any work done at all when they are spending so much time in daily or almost daily social interaction. They must be far better than I at multi-tasking and I actually do not envy them that level of juggling. Just being a wife and a partner in my husband’s business in addition to being a writer and artist requires quite enough juggling, thank you very much.
I choose my moments for being social and anyone who truly knows me will recognise the difference in my appearance immediately. When I am in a quiet space of contemplative solitude, the light is on in my eyes — but there is also a lot going on behind those eyes. When I am in a social mindset, the light is on in my whole face.
No, I am not hermetic — but I am, both by inclination and necessity, selective with my time and creative energy. And hermetic versus selective are two rather different states of being.
The Purge Progress
Posted on | February 18, 2010 | No Comments
DVDs by the Dozen go Bye-Bye!
I will be finished with the DVD listings (3 dozen so far!) this week and next week starts the really big BOOK PURGE! Our darling cottage is far to small for 850 books to be atop groaning shelves. Now they will find new homes elsewhere!
Happily, I can also report that I’ve already hauled several loads of household items off to the charity shops.
My dear friend K said to me the other day — “What’s happened to your musings? People miss it when you don’t post your musings!”
Give my poor little hand a chance to recover from the repetitive stress of holding a computer mouse whilst cropping and editing photos — and I’ll be back!
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