shapeshifting

This gets better.

Monday I woke up with a migraine. Welcome to my week off. Took a pill. Sometimes the pill just zaps out the migraine and I can function pretty much at full capacity. Sometimes the pill acts almost like an anaesthetic and I'm not really safe to be on my feet. As the pill is a constant, I guess what's happening neurologically in my body must change. Migraine takes many forms even in one person.

So there I am, not yet aware that I'm about to fall into a semi-coma. I have to meet my mother at the local Te3co Superstore (see H for Hell and Holidays), along with Evie and my 5 year old nephew who is lovely but all slugs and snails and hyperactive puppy-dogs' tails. She has some clothing vouchers that she wants Evie to benefit from and frankly, we can't afford to say no. Staying upright and responsible uses all my energy so I'm snappy and impatient. I drive home (I know, I know) and then it hits me full on. I go to bed for one, maybe two hours.

Later I try to download some photos from the weekend - and there are some lovely ones among them - and also, as it happens, the photos I took of Casey on his last day. Just before we headed off to the vet.

Something's wrong with the flash card. I can't copy them off it. I try everything, every method. Even data recovery software. Nope. They're there on the card but I can't have them.

Evie has reacted to the sunscreen she wore on Sunday. She has a livid, itchy eczema all over her face and neck, poor kid.

Charlie's boss comes over for the End of Trial Period Review. When he leaves we're down an income. Face-to-face charity recruitment is a tough game - sales of a worthy product maybe, but a luxury product all the same and this area is just being really hit by the downturn. Targets are nigh on impossible to meet. Charlie tried really hard. They don't care that this could mean we have to move to a one-bedroom flat in a rundown market town. Why should they? Most of the team he trained with have also lost out.

Tuesday means another pill but luckily no coma as I'm working with the Beagles. Since the death of their lady owner/breeder her husband and son (ages, I'd guess, 90 and 60) have soldiered on with my help once a week. They can't manage and so some dogs have been rehomed. They'd said goodbye to sweet Z a couple of weeks ago. Today I go in to find that one of my favourites, lovely T has gone to a new home and the grand old lady Beagle, D, has gone to be reunited with her owner. At 15, she faded out the way Casey did. So we're down to just four Beagles. Four sad Beagles. P, especially, has not recovered from the loss of her human. Today she comes and sits next to me - not on my lap as usual but just next to me. A sad little girl, leaning against me with a sigh. She is still much loved - I think she was a favourite of her owner and so husband and son are particularly attached. I think that T and D leaving has been a bit too much for her. I reiki her while we sit in the sun and she tells me about her sadness.

At home I hear from my sister that the two big employers in our neighbouring town - the two call centres that pretty much saved a generation from disaster when they opened in the late 90s - are closing. We will be flooded with young men and women with young families and mortgages and debt, looking for the few jobs there are available. One of them will be my sister.

Today, after a quick trip to the supermarket brandishing vouchers and reward points, I pick up Evie's best friend and bring them back here. Giggling, shrieking happy girls. I don't care that they're 'making potions in the bath' or destroying some part of the house...just let them be happy. I'll clean up later. While I'm out, the vet calls. Casey's casket has arrived back. Do I want to go and collect it? Well yes, but there's the small matter of having to settle the bill and I have £3 in my bank account. So he's sitting on a  shelf waiting for me to get my working tax credits so that I can pay to have him home with me.

...

Y'know what? I don't want to live my life like this anymore. I'm am so, so literally sick and tired. I'm done with this. I live in a beautiful place and I have so much that I am deeply grateful for but I am guilty of using it as a distraction. It is the opium of this person. I have to break the habit.

...

When I think about how put things right my brain engages and then fails. I know myself to be smart and resourceful and inventive but I got nothing. The very thought of trying again just makes me fall over. Oh I have ideas. Anyone who reads this blog will know I'm always having A Great Idea but now...now I feel paralysed by it all.

And so there is only one thing to do.

Surrender. Give it up. Let go. There is a real sense of things falling away without me even having to actively release them. They are not being 'taken', they are just falling away and I think that might be okay. I understand that it has to happen.

What I need to do is return to the practice I started at the beginning of the year. Healing, meditation, acceptance and space-clearing. Once that space is clear from anxiety and panic - even for a sweet moment of respite - I can hold it open for what comes next. It will come and so will my strength but for now it's just acceptance and practice. Easy to say.

Most of all, knowing that I'm done with the distraction of beauty (not the beauty itself, just the abuse of it), I'm ready to live my life the way I want to. The way I have to.

Part of that is writing about things that matter to me knowing that some readers will a) think I've finally snapped or b) laugh or c) both the above. But I'm done caring about other people more than I care about me. So I'm going to tell you that on Tuesday night I tuned into a drum and journeyed to meet my spirit animal. She's a young wolf and her name, she tells me, is Divna. We met some time back. I thought maybe her name was Irish but looking it up I find it's Hungarian for beautiful. She's certainly that and she's certainly a European wolf. This night I wait for some heavy answer to my questions but she starts dancing. And it's funny. She looks ridiculous and she's doing it on purpose. She's telling me to laugh. I see her dancing painted in broad strokes with energy shining from it

....

I've been trying, in snatched moments to return to Kathleen Dean Moore's Wild Comfort. I read half of it a month or more ago and now I'm back. On Monday I picked it up and randomly opened a page. Now, when I do this I don't usually get some profound sign, I get an advert for dentures or double-glazing. Sorry but it's true. I don't generally have good random-page-mojo but I did this day. This is what I read:

When you die, it's done, the chance is gone. So when you live? When you live, make it all. Don't wait for the rain to stop. Climb out of your tent with your mind engaged and your senses ablaze and let the rain pour into you. Remember: you are not who you think you are. You are what you do. Be the kindness of soft rain. Be the beauty of light behind a tall fir. Be gratitude. Be gladness.

Ever since, like a mantra, I hear, "You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are. You are not who you think you are..." and I may well still be curled up in my tent, but I'm looking out on a whole new landscape.

I've been re-visiting my Lotta Jansdotter printing and sewing books and remembering why I love her work and style so much. Now I find she just started blogging. This makes me very happy.

Also, as my very short crop begins to grow out and every day is a struggle not to look like Rhys Ifans, I'm loving what she does with her hair. See? All round inspiration.

This morning, despite the rain and cold, I took myself into Bradford-on-Avon. It's just two miles way and I love it.  I browsed the library, choosing books for Evie and me. I now have The Wisdom of Donkeys, The Homeopathic Treatment of Small Animals and Nature Cure to look forward to.

I visited the notice board that sits between the health food store and the co-operative cafe and the Bodhi Tree (upholstery, gifts and meditation rooms R us). It always makes me feel at home.

I went, for the first time, to the Cafe El Quetzal and treated myself to a latte and a slice of homemade cake.

As Sas pointed out in her comment, gratitude and source have a strong link. And source is where our spirits lift so I'm going to try to make room for some gratitude blogging.

Today I am grateful for:

• A daughter who says, in a deep and serious 'voiceover' voice,"Mum I really love school. There are many, many challenges."
• The time to spend an hour or so doing nothing in particular.
• Literacy.

It's been a bird-y week. I've been at home with a disgusting cough lurgy, feeling like rubbish but - between bouts of collapsing into my bed - enjoying getting to know Xanthe Little-Bird. You may have noticed.

Inspired by her I started on Corvus, a book I'd picked up in a second hand shop some months ago and added to my pile of To Reads. It's a fabulous book; part memoir, part natural history lesson, all wonderful.

On migration, author Esther Woolfson wrote a paragraph that is still circling around my mind:

Birds may be aware too of 'infra sound', those ultra-low-frequency sounds too low for the human ear, the sounds of the movements of the earth, the deep whisperings, the groanings, creakings, crackings of the fabric of universe, the sounds of the sea and wind, of oceans and volcanoes, the explosion of meteors, the gathering of hurricanes far away.

That may not bring chickens leaping into your mind but it does for me. More than that, it reminds me of what we can learn from the animals around us if we pay attention and let them show us. Who wouldn't want to be close to that? Learning to pick up the secondary waves?

Meantime, as we witnessed meteors with our own eyes, I've let the concept of life as art make its own flight through my mind, body and yes, spirit. It's released me from feeling I need to make a choice, an effort, to see which traditionally 'creative' activity fits me best. Which I need to learn/improve and somehow turn into something that will liberate me from my desk job. I hadn't realised I was doing that until I stopped. Stopped and remembered:

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Yes, the Mary Oliver quote that lives on my blog and yet somehow I've not fully understood until now.

My 'stepdaughter' Emily used to refer to girls on the Emo scene who piled on every single trend as Try-Hards, while she - of course - was effortlessly, side-sweepingly cool. Last night I realised I've like, totally been a Life Try-Hard??? Oh the shaaaaaaaame. Heh.

It was Xanthe that finally made me see this. A small chicken. Although I'm beginning to believe that there is no such thing as a small chicken. As I spent hours deep in brambles, scratched and stung, trying to get to her without frightening her or losing her. As I spent time just sitting with her perched on my shoulder, telling me her story and her name. As I spent the last of my energy sorting out chicken-housing so she, Idgie and Ninny could learn to live together. I saw that when I'm with animals...that's when I'm in the zone. My zone, my element. I have no anxiety, just creative thinking about how to be with them. I'm not thinking about what someone else would do or how well they'd do it, I'm peacefully focused on the dog/cat/horse/bird/amphibian alongside me. Effortlessly motivated. There is no resistance.

And suddenly the path ahead is clear.

I should be outside and I will be outside but before I go, some things I want to spill onto the page:

• The thing I demonstrated in the vlog is for scattered energies. When you're overwhelmed and can't get a straight thought out of your head. Do it 2-3 times a day and feel everything click back into order. Seriously. I have another for you too. Which means..uh oh...another vlog on the horizon. I might brush my hair this time.
• I fought a migraine for three days and won. Sleep, sleep and more sleep.
• I dug out an old sketch pad and drew. And didn't judge the results.
• I took my camera out at 10pm with my dogs and took some beautiful photographs.
• I picked up my hoop last night for the first time in a very long week. I needed to feel good and it never fails me. I side-stepped (or rather didn't, heh, hooping joke) the walking spin and tried something else. I span the hoop on my hand above my head (Wild West) and then I dropped it down over my shoulders onto my waist and kept it going (Float Down). I KNOW! I did the same from an overhead spin on both hands at once and it felt amazing. I also learned how to spin the hoop on my neck. This morning I ache like f*** and have bruises all over my hands and can't wait to get started again. Except this time I'll try not to bash myself on the nose with a 44" hoop.
• At some point yesterday I was thinking about wildness and how when I was younger my wild side was in her element when she was leaping about to very loud music. Namely the music that she felt in her bones. Namely the guitar sound of The Edge. And then overnight the Universe did something amazing and Tor tweeted about it and I cried happy tears and it was awesome.
• And Tracie mentioned she'd been listening to Black Prairie and I loved them too. Perfect summer night listening (apart from Edge and Muse, natch).
• Also, I read this:

Wolves never look more funny than when they have lost the scent and scrabble to find it again: they hop in the air; they run in circles; they plow up the ground with their noses; they scratch the ground, then run ahead, then back, then stand stock-still. They look as if they have lost their wits. But what they are really doing is picking up all the clues they can find. They're biting them down out of the air, they're filling up their lungs with the smells at ground level and at shoulder level, they are tasting the air to see who has passed through it recently, their ears rotating like satellite dishes, picking up transmissions from afar. Once they have all these clues in one place, they know what to do next.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

This has been my weekend. I hope yours is/was as fulfilling.

It struck me today that Style Statement works. Remember mine? Sacred Natural. And this week it seems I'm closer to living that than ever. It feels good.

I'm writing this as part of my 800 words for Bindu and shall be following up with some Legs Up The Wall. I know it's an easy yoga option but I'm clear about my needs at the moment and they include some rest.

I'm reading about ways to raise my spirited child and discovering that life is much easier and nicer for us now I've acknowledged the clash between her extravert nature and my introversion. If I take time to make sure both of us get what we need in terms of company and intense communication for Evie and quiet and alone time for me, then she is able to spend time alone while I do, and my brain doesn't meltdown while I play many, many games of ninja turtles or dog rescue centres (what? she's my daughter) with her.

Of course there's hooping - my newest love. It was Sara (yes she of the wonderful dreads) whose newest blog showed me the way and already I'm falling asleep visualising myself hooping. Have you seen what she can already do after SIX WEEKS??? Now I'm waiting for this to arrive tomorrow, watching the lovely AHni and Beth and knowing you don't get much more Sacred Natural than that. You know I'm going to be practising a few spins before I hit the yoga wall.

I'm still working through what happened with LK, the creative kinesiologist and things I'd long forgotten are floating to the surface. I'm drinking a lot of water and doing my energy unscrambling exercise (that I forgot to blog about but yeah). I'm doing reiki self-treatments and sifting away the crud with some cool drumming from Fabeku.

I've got some mind-blowing business advice from the former Ms Style Statement herself, now giving the world her White Hot Truth in the Firestarter Sessions, Danielle LaPorte. All thanks to my sweet Kiwi sister, Sas (watch out for her, she's about to start some big old fires of her own).

And as if to prove that all this good stuff is bringing me home, today I got my first client for Wag Bark Love. He's 14 weeks old, his name is JJ and he looks remarkably like this.

It's a dirty, sacred, natural job...but someone's gotta do it.

I can't remember who it was who started the idea that the Universe could be reached via Twitter - I think it was Sister Carrie - but the #dearUniverse hash tag has become very useful. And, y'know, why not?

My tongue was just slightly in my cheek with my thanks to the U - even though the aforementioned Sister Carrie tweeted that the U showed enormous common/universal sense in not granting me the faux cream leather when I have a 4 year old and a cupboard full of marker pens. Instead we have a very attractive dark blue fabric. Nice. I decided to decide it was a gift to me from the U and accepted it gleefully.

This evening, after all was set up and cosy, we settled in the kitchen. The heater had been mysteriously turned off in the living room (it charges overnight and so won't be warm again until tomorrow) so for once, Charlie gritted his dog-loathing teeth and joined us downstairs. We have one room on each of four floors with a nice, big kitchen on the ground floor where the dogs live when they're not charging around fields.

For a while, he and Evie shared the sofa while he blogged and she chattered. I sat at the table and listened and helped draw SpongeBob and Patrick.

After she was safely tucked up in bed asleep I came back downstairs to the kitchen. I curled up on the new sofa with The Secret Life of Bees (which I finished and loved) and drifted off to the world of the Daughters of Mary.

Then at one point, possibly stopping to think about getting some chocolate from the fridge, I looked up and saw Charlie sitting on the floor next to the sofa, back against the heater, laptop on his outstretched legs. Between him and the sofa, near his feet, sat Jackson, either rapt in thoughts or zoned out (yep, the latter gets my vote too). On Charlie's other side, eyes fixed firmly on me, lay Nellie. As my eyes met hers she jumped up and lay on my feet.

This may not sound extraordinary to you but trust me, it was. My dog-loving ways are anathema to Charlie. He loathes the two (three if you count the cat, and you should) animals who have been with me for years longer than he has. Does not understand the love I feel for them. Avoids them as much as is possible.

It's okay. If he was a dog-lover I may have to kill him for being too perfect. Every mill needs its grist, right? As long as that grist doesn't hurt anyone, two-footed or four. I've got used to having the grand canyon wind its way through my heart with Charlie and the animals on separate sides. Evie flies between both with such grace and passion that it kind of heals the gash.

I don't expect it to become a regular occurrence. I doubt it will ever happen again, but for a moment there, I saw that the sofa really was a gift from the U. For a moment there, my life was perfect and how many people ever get to have that? 

Today I was given a dream evening at a time when I really needed it. Maybe the Universe, maybe a stranger's generosity, maybe both. I'll take it and go off to bed with a big smile on my face.

Happy Tuesday.

I just bought this:

Oh and just for fun, I bought one of these each for me and Alisa: