Who is telling me not to do this?

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“You want to write a book? Who do you think you are? Why would anyone spend any time or the money on it? Who’s interested in reading your stuff? You will expose your inner life unnecessarily. You are not a writer. Don’t pretend to be one. Your book will simply prove your mediocrity to everyone. Even if you manage to write it, who will publish it? I think you will have to go the self-publishing route.” Oh no! This voice in my head. In any case, I don’t have time. Nor the talent or the imagination. I don’t feel inspired. I am not in the right frame of mind. There’s too much else going on. I am struggling with ‘structure’. It’s serious and solitary hard work. As the story is still unfolding, we haven’t reached the end yet. So, how can it be finished? When I sit at my desk staring at a blank page, I freeze. I don’t know what to write about. It’s too big a job and the hospital is keeping me so busy. On top of that, there are unending chores that need done. The summer has finally arrived and I should take the time to enjoy that. The list of excuses goes on and on. There is so much I don’t remember accurately anymore. How do I put that in words? I am up against this project when I want to flow with it. The book wants to come from a place of love. Not angst. I need to take it easy. Breathe. Gently ask my inner critic to come back later, when I am on the second draft. For now, leave me alone with these blank pages. Let me see them as friends who want to help me be fully expressed. I need to learn to connect with my anxious heart, soothe it and be fully present here at my desk. Right now. And start, regardless. Go to the kitchen. Make a cup of coffee. Water the money-plant. Return to the study. Look at the man in a blue and white base-ball cap walking with his tan Labrador in the park across the road. The round green trees and the clear blue sky. I put on the soundtrack of Human’s music on Youtube – a spectacular film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, music composed by Armand Amar. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uog4eCZTUX4) I am but a dot on this enormous picture inside which I live. Connected with everything. Not separate. In my heart, can I trust myself to be a tiny part of a greater process? Trust myself. Show up every day and work with the mystery. Trust myself.

Blue words

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Woke up at 3 am this morning to attend a Poetry workshop on-line, India time. Himalayan Writing Retreat made it happen for us twelve. Hard to believe so much fun and learning could happen with strangers, sitting thousands of miles apart. Here’s what came out of it. Looking forward to much much more. Today’s Haibun:

She is decimated – an earthen clay pot, once holding colourless water in a colourless circle, now dust. She watches this happen to her, as if from outer space. As she zooms in, she can touch the wetness of what is spilt all over the marbled floor. It is possibly still within reach, this source of life. Drop by drop, she picks it up and adds it into her tumbler of tears. It magically swirls into an aquamarine blue – deeper than the deepest ocean and sky. The blue of life. Yes. It is blue and all of it, her very own.

She colours her words with it. The words that were once, blood red.

Her walls, her flowers, her friendships.

Now she has this blue, she’s complete again. Fully of this earth.

dancing flame . . .

finding myself

in the mirror again

(Resource: Learn to write at https://www.himalayanwritingretreat.com/)

Now, they are pink.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

The day after he died, our door-bell went berserk. This time the same young woman from the local florist, who had been here thrice already, stood at the door again. She had arrived with yet another bouquet of pure white lilies and roses. She stood just outside our front-door with tears rolling down her cheeks. Had this stranger accessed her own sadness or was she feeling mine? I thanked her and tried to console her, wordlessly holding her hands in mine, not believing any of that was happening.

Our eyes met through the fresh white flowers and films of salt water. She didn’t know me or the young man who had died and I didn’t even know her name. But we were flowing in the same river of humanity. Of loss.

For weeks, every room in our house reeked of the sickly-sweet stink of white lilies. I used to like that fragrance before all this but now it screamed ‘DEATH’. It crept into every empty space, crevice and corner. It sneaked under tables and inside locked cup-boards. It suffused my clothes and hair and got into my body like poison.

All these years later, that smell can still hit like an axe on top of my head when I walk past an innocent flower shop.

On my birthday last week, a bunch of Freddie’s flowers arrived unexpectedly. I thought I had cancelled that delivery but it seems I hadn’t. Roses, lilies and gladioli – but this time, they are a pretty pretty pink. Six days on, they are open and smiling and guess what … no heart-breaking fragrance.

Our long-distance relationship is working. Thank you, sweetheart.

It changes. And changes again.

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Over and over I asked myself – Now what? Now what? What happens after a severance such as this? How long do one’s bones bleed? Do the tears ever finish? What does ‘recovery’ look like? Is it even possible? How does one keep placing one foot in front of the other? Where is the road? Where does it come from? Where does it go? How long and meandering is it? When does the screaming in my head stop? How long can I keep up the facade? Pretend to be sane? Is this what a new diagnosis of a terminal illness feels like? Is forgiveness possible? Self-forgiveness? Acceptance? Surrender? All these big words! Surrender what? To whom? Who am I now? What do I do?

No answers. Silence. The tilted earth keeps spinning around its imaginary axis. It keeps cradling me. The sun stays at the center of its orbit. My son stays at the center of my being. My breath keeps coming and going. I grow new eyes. My bones carry my weight even though they bleed. The road appears under my feet. It reveals itself one step at a time. Rumi and Khalil Gibran come and hold my hand. The screaming softens. The wall of bricks that was my body, loosens. I come to know the terror and the joy of being insane, catch glimpses of being free. Respect for those who went before and sadly others, who follow. I stop fighting with the big words and keep it simple. Watch. Observe. See. Open. Let the gash in my heart, allow the light in.

A recent talk for The Compassionate Friends, a charity dedicated to supporting bereaved families.

Less than 3

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Si was flummoxed by the ‘<3’ sign appearing repeatedly in the chat box on a zoom call with friends. Sometimes all by itself, without context, without a before or after. It took him a while to realise what it was. I suppose you know already. Don’t you?

“Love thy neighbour as thyself” implies that respect for one’s own uniqueness and integrity is inseparable from the understanding of anothers. Yet, it is widely believed that it is virtuous to love others. But to offer that same love to yourself is somewhat indulgent. In fact, this misconception goes as far as to say that the degree to which I love myself, I do not love others. Self-love is commonly understood to be synonymous with selfishness or narcissism. The French theologian, John Calvin speaks of self-love as ‘a pest’. Self-love bad, hence, unselfishness good.

Selfishness and self-love are opposites. When selfish, one is incapable of loving others and incapable of loving oneself.

Only recently have I come to know this to be the truth – I am deserving of my love. In fact, I cannot fully love and respect another, until I love and respect myself a hundred percent. I don’t need to buy expensive gifts for me to experience it. Sitting quietly with myself is an act of love. It does not need evidence. It is free of all obligatory burdens. It is freedom itself.

On this day, I hope you can be your own Valentine. Happy Valentine’s day! Today and every day.

“If you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself. As long as you love another person less than you love yourself, you will not really succeed in loving yourself, but if you love all alike, including yourself, you will love them as one person and that person is both God and man. Thus, he is a great and righteous person, who, loving himself, loves all others equally.”

Meister Eckhart

Storyless

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I need my story.

Who am I without it?

It’s a habitual place.

A refuge.

Something I can lean on and hide behind.

This is my story. This is me.

Is it? Really?

Am I not more than the way I have been taught to respond and speak and act?

More than the stories they told me and I tell myself?

Am I not a mysterious, wondrous creation of the galaxies?

Am I not more than a feelings-crunching machine?

An events-processing factory?

Like all other life forms, am I not designed to evolve through challenges.

Adapt. Learn. Grow?

Processing kills it. My creativity.

Thinking locks me up. In familiar prison cells.

Who I am

flies, flows, dances, melds and reaches out with all its arms.

It knows not what it is.

Like the ocean knows not how deep it dives.

Like the sky does not care how far above the planets it stretches.

Like the day knows not the secrets that will unfold as it extends into time.

Like the stars twinkle on, oblivious of how many eons pass them by,

Which telescope catches them, which doesn’t.

Like the spring knows not where its flowers will grow.

Like the river sings along, not knowing who will drink from it or

The apple tree that offers all to friends and strangers and

Stands. Story-less.

Who am I?

I am. I am. I am.