‘Yes, Moon?’ said Sun as he fell into the evening sky.
‘I shine every night. I brighten the humans’ world. Why do they not love me?’
‘Moon?’
‘Yes, Sun?’
‘You have a chip in your tooth.’
‘Do I?! Oh, no! Maybe that’s why!’
‘Moon?’
‘Yes, Sun?’
‘It’s a tooth.’
‘I know. And I don’t want a broken one.’
‘But you have a broken one.’
‘Sun! You are not hearing what I am saying! The humans don’t love me and I don’t want a broken tooth.’ Moon stormed around the sky, looking for her lost boot.
‘Moon? I love you. And you have a broken tooth. Not but, and. Did you hear me? And you have a broken tooth.’
‘Sun. I have no idea what you’re on about,’ said Moon, putting her found boot on and keying in her crescent shine coordinates.
‘I know, Moon, I know. You’ll understand one day.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You will.’
And with that, Moon said goodbye and shone unconditionally for the humans below.
I am authentically myself when I am not at all myself, and it is magical, beautiful, wonderful.
What do I mean by this? Well, I’m not sure. It’s a little too obscure to understand or explain, but I’m certain you’ve felt it. I’m certain you’ll know what I mean when I tell you.
I’ve been reading the BFG to my son. He’s seven, and the best, and so naturally I want to give him the most beautiful experiences life has to offer. Reading is one of those experiences, and the magic of Roald Dahl is…well, it’s magic. There’s no real way to capture that feeling, for me.
And when I read this beautiful story to him, I so often find myself transformed. Every night I become the BFG. I put on my unusually accurate english accent and off I go. I am the BFG (or am I Roald Dahl, it’s hard to really say.)
It’s what I loved so much about acting. Embodying and expressing energies that are not my own is so intoxicating I could easily become addicted to the very thing. The deep booming cutesy tone that flies from my mouth every time the BFG speaks to Sophie: it fills my whole body, it resonates down to the bone.
I so love it.
I so love being authentically me, without being me at all.
I mean, I sometimes wonder if I can still write fiction that peels my skin from the bone. Words I read back after I’ve written them and find that they speak to my soul.
It’s been a long time since I’ve written any fiction. My poor novel is sitting desperately among the cobwebs of my computer, wondering where I am. The short stories I once wrote are just that: short stories I once wrote.
The truth is, I’m afraid.
Because I wonder if I can still write.
And so I procrastinate and procrastinate until I don’t even try anymore. I know it is simply a matter of starting. But. I don’t even start.
I am too busy to scratch my nose, also, so that is one actual fact I can’t ignore. Even if I was brave enough to face the looming blank page, there is no time for that in these early stages of newborn life. These moments, now, are stolen moments I am taking back from Motherhood.
And I’ve chosen to give them to this place.
My heart place.
My home. (Where all of you are. My beautiful bloggy family.)
If history has anything to say about this pattern of me, I will make my way, eventually, to the place of bravery that allows for creativity to run free of the well. I will, once again, bring my whole soul to the surface of my world. I will create worlds, and lives, and beauty through art.
But that time is not now.
Now, I am here. (Happily, peacefully, lovingly I am here.)
Savouring these stolen moments.
Waiting for the baby to wake, running from the fears I know are lurking in the shadows.
I am not afraid to sit still. Here. Now. I am not afraid of this.
The sweet divinity that lingers at the edge of life.
Writers and artists know it well. Actors and musicians feel it within their bodies. And none of us have any clue as to what it is. Not even those who believe, beyond a doubt, that they do know the source of this most beautiful, magical wind.
To understand this force would surely be like bottling and dissecting infinity. How could you bottle a never ending force like that? More to the point, how could you ever truly understand what it was or where it had come from? I just don’t think it would be humanly possible.
I read a book a little while ago, by Sue Monk Kidd, named ‘The Book of Longings’. I’ve been re reading it, and last night I couldn’t help but smile as I came across a familiar idea. The invisible divinity. She mentions it in the book, and right away I knew I had to share it with you all. Surely as readers and writers, both, you have felt this invisible magic. How beautiful it is to know we are not alone in our recognition of it.
The act itself of writing evoked powers, often divine, but often unstable that entered the letters and sent a mysterious animating force rippling through the ink.
Sue Monk Kidd. The Book Of Longings
At University, I studied writing. One of the units I studied was called, ‘Writing: Finding your Voice’ but the thing was…it never seemed as simple as that, to me. That we each have a ‘voice’ we can use to write with in a unique and beautiful way, or that one could simply ‘find’ this voice. Like finding a tennis ball beneath a shrubby, weedy bush in the desert.
All I can say about this mysterious voice is that I feel its magic arise when I relax my entire body and stop thinking. I’ve heard the phrase thrown about that, to evoke the force, we need to ‘get out of our own way’. To me, this is both entirely accurate and also impossible to comprehend.
Just whose way are we getting out of exactly?
And what, exactly, is the mysterious animating force behind it all?
I’m very aware of the rich soil of this place. How I am peeking through the soft earth, unravelling beautifully. How I am fully becoming myself.
Over these past few weeks, I’ve been allowing myself to be as I am, just watching the world go by. Watching all the expectations I had for my life and my dreams fall apart, so sweetly.
I am here to create and to love.
That is all.
It seems that, for most of my life, although I have been creating, although I have been loving…I have been looking to frame this creativity and love within an identity. Within a ‘reason’. For example: I must write a book in order to write legitimately, to be accepted under the culturally approved model of what a writer/creator must wish to strive for.
But I don’t wish to strive for this. Although it would be lovely to hold a book of my heart in my very own hands, I am so fulfilled by life that it truly does not feel necessary, to me.
I only wish to create. To be utterly fulfilled by this most beautiful connection with myself and the people I write for.
How or where my creativity (my essence) finds these people has become unimportant to me. I trust my words and heart will find home, effortlessly. I know this logic might make no sense to some, but for me, to flow through life feels like the only right way.
I never had to write a book to be a writer. I never had to be ‘a writer’.
I’ve tried all the angles. I’ve felt all the rights and wrongs about what they say a writer should do, should be, should want…but I’m not like them.
I want barely any of what they tell me I should want.
To write from my heart, that is what I want.
To touch other hearts, I want that, too.
To shine so that others might know what it is like to shine on the other end of my words: I want that, more than anything else. Life is for dreaming and being the sweet dreams that we are.
I’ve tried to write for money: it leaves me empty.
I’ve tried to write any old thing: it leaves me tired, frustrated, hungry.
To share the depths of my soul is what I am here to do.
She places her palms over her ears and breathes into her belly. ‘Don’t wish it away. Such a precious age,’ she’s heard it a million times. She smiles politely. Tells them, silently, they’ve forgotten. Blocked out the bad times, remembered only the good.
She wants to say to them that every coin has two sides; every story, multiple themes running at once. And love. Even the love of a parent has two sides, always. When it’s easy, and when it’s hard.
Bathroom days are hard.
She counts the hairs stuck to the bathroom tiles. She won’t have time to pick them up, piece by scraggily piece. Too busy being an excellent mother, not wishing too loud for peace and quiet to find her once again.
She belongs in the bathroom.
They belong in fresh-white homes, lovingly tending to their overgrown toenails.
Australian summer and there I was, sipping a glass of wine beneath the gumtrees, wrapped in my best winter scarf and topped with a little woolen hat. The wind: shocking.
It’s not unusual for the country town we’re holidaying in to reach these frosty temperatures at night. I’m certain we’ll look back in years to come with fond memories of swaying gums and whirls around the caravan park on bikes, but I also think we’ll marvel at Mother Nature and her wacky sense of humour. During the day, it is not unusual for the temperature to reach forty degrees celsius and beyond, some years, and yet the blankets come out when the sun falls. It’s quite funny, really.
It reminds me of Melbourne (my hometown) and her ability to display every single aspect of all four seasons in one day. The rest of Australia laughs at our expense, but the truth is: Melbournians gladly identify with this peculiar trick of the weather. We happily declare it one of our most impressive party tricks.
I’m breezy and happy, today. After a solo journey back to Melbourne, earlier, to celebrate my beautiful Grandma’s 90th birthday (and a nice big heart-opening drive back, listening to music) I’m so grateful for all the experiences that have brought me here. To this place in my life, I mean. Not just to this dodgy little caravan park in the middle of nowhere.
I am reminded of the worth of life experience each time I feel the beautiful glow of wholeness beneath my skin. Each time I feel the spirit rise within me; the times I’m ready, and quite able, to speak the truths my heart knows to be absolute. I am not perfect. Life is not perfect, and never will be. But I am here, and I am grateful for these exhausting family days (and even you lot fall upon the grateful-o-metre of me…aww, sigh. Like, really, you guys. x) so a girl couldn’t ask for much more to help drift me through my days.
Right. Off to drink my tea and snuggle up with, what is turning out to be, one lovely heart-filling book.
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