Saturday 31 October 2009

Happy Halloween!

I've just come home from a wonderful evening out with my neighbour and her little boy at the Bungay Pumpkin Night. Its a celebration of Halloween. Dress up, trick or treat, bring out your pumpkins and have fun! I took my camera, and I am so glad I did. I was completely shameless about going up to people and asking to take their pictures. Everyone looked so amazing! And the pumpkins! There is so much creativity out there in our little town. I was sorry I hadn't dressed up, but I was wearing my bright red coat so I pretended I had come as the dwarf in 'Don't Look Now'.... Never mind. Happy New Year everyone!

Thursday 29 October 2009

Trying too Hard

How do you make lemons into lemonade?

I've spent two days this week pretty much flat on my back. Utterly burnt out. 'Malade com paraquette', as they say. Unable to even think straight, let alone read or write coherently. Today I felt a bit better and threw myself back into doing mode. Duh!

Back to square one...

I'm trying to do a rewrite of my novel, which is currently involving a major rethink. Not just of the book itself but of how I work as a whole. Its slow going. Think Plate Tectonics. Moving continents. That kind of thing. I am having to change my whole practice, and that is hard.

I guess I am truly part of the MTV generation because things never go fast enough for me. I want this change to happen NOW! Like, as in YESTERDAY! But major life changes don't work like that. I am too impatient. A Zen Master would have beaten me to death with my broom in exasperation by now. Why do I never listen to myself?

The way to make lemonade out of this particularly frustrating and sour lemon is to sit with it. Let the process happen. 'Be Still and know that I am...' as my Guardian Angel keeps telling me, while He is pinning me to the floor so that I can't do anything else (He is a very proactive Guardian Angel).

I wish I had a really good photograph of a lemon to go on this post, because that's how I feel now. A complete lemon. For not working it out sooner. For being too impatient. For not listening to myself. And then for beating myself up about it when I realise what I have done. What a goon. Never mind, onwards and upwards. And off to find a lemon to photograph!

Wednesday 28 October 2009

Halloween Time Again

Hope you like my creepy self-portrait. Its been a tough couple of months, and I am busy trying to work on my redraft of my novel, with slow results. Not much time for other writing, hence the lack of posts here. Still, this time of year always starts to get my juices flowing. The clocks go back, the evenings close in, we light the fire and snuggle down. An interior time of year. That is when books are made.

It is also Pagan New Year. I am thinking of all the things I am leaving behind as I leave this year, and the new seeds I want to plant in my life for the next. A time of new beginnings. The veil is thin. I am aware as always of mortality, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth around me. Putting the garden to bed at this time of year is the outer manifestation of this process - putting one's life in order before going down underground, into the Other.

Letting go seems to be the theme that is coming up, over and over again for me right now, whether it is the constant nagging memories of failure from my the past, of emotions, of people (including me) who are getting older, of old patterns of ill-health that no longer serve me or just entrenched patterns of tension and stress. I think that even if we are chucking stuff out, it is important to remember that it was once crucial to us, and to honour the part it played in our lives. So I am trying to do that, slowly, carefully, sitting with what I am trying to release, knowing that letting go will lighten the load.

We all need to let go of things so that we can make room in our lives for new, exciting things. What are you letting go of right now?