shapeshifting

Eggs. Three brown eggs a day. But no blue MeiMei eggs.

This afternoon I was in the garden and lifted a straggling vine to fix it to the wall. Beneath it is an old half-barrel with the remains of last year's compost in it, unplanted this summer because the hens just dig up new plants. And in the barrel...seven slightly mucky-looking blue eggs.

That's abundance.

Our very nice, conservation-minded Landlord has it in his head that there are too many jackdaws around this year and they're killing the songbirds. They're not. Anyway, he wants to make a pre-emptive strike and shoot the jackdaws.

my work station

We have jackdaws living in our chimney stack or, as Evie calls it, our jimley. They are The Jimley Jackdaws (and if I ever change my name by deed poll again I'm going to be Jo Jimley-Jackdaw because we all know that would be awesome). I love our jackdaws and do not want their death or the deaths of their subsequently starving chicks literally hanging over our heads.

I quite like it.

(Young jackdaws have pale blue eyes.)

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'm in the habit of listening to things as I fall asleep at night. To simply relax and drift off I have the EquiSync Enlightenment. For Reiki I use Reiki Evolution meditations for self-treatment or distant healing (it's not necessary to have guidance but I find it helps me focus sometimes), and for just moving stuff out of a rut I vibe out to Fabeku's Remembering Through Resonance, an old favourite of mine.

So last night I'm away with the Singing Bowls of Awesome and easing myself out of the 'Oh god tomorrow's Monday what should I have got ready that I didn't get ready will I have time to do it in the morning crap I don't have any petrol in the car there's only a fiver in my account...' spiral. Yeah, that's the one. You know it?

I thought, for the gzillionth time,"What would I do if I really didn't have to worry about money? If I was so rich I could do whatever I wanted?" and I'll admit, I expected the same old mix of 'Save The World' and 'F*** Knows' to show up. But it didn't. Instead I started to see a huge wooden building in my garden - I say huge, I mean bigger than our little greenhouse which is titchy. It was white inside and out, big windows, full of light. Inside there was workspace to follow whatever creative whim came into my head: paint, pencil, crafting, words, animation, sewing... Whatever I felt like trying out, I could just move around this studio and find a space to do it. The endless ideas I have flowing through my head would not end up in the universal recycling bin but might actually get tried even if they were never finished. The studio was messy but not cluttered. Organised and yet not. The sun was shining and the dogs were asleep on rag rugs, soaking up the warmth. Clearest of all was the space in my head - there was an absence of pressure. Pressure to pay the rent, feed us, settle the water bill, tax the car, get Jackson's teeth checked, stay in credit, buy school shoes for Evie...money money money. Pressure. Have I mentioned my migraines?

The pressure wasn't there. There was light. And it was light. And in it I could so so many things.

So my next thought was,"I'm never going to have that kind of money." And no, let's be honest, I'm not. For all I believe in magic, I also believe that I'm never going to be a millionaire. Any more than I'm going to be a dancer on a  Madonna tour or set up an elephant sanctuary or adopt from China again. Ain't gonna happen.

And my next thought was,"What if you could be self-supporting doing that work? What if, you didn't have some mysterious external income allowing you that space BUT, it did pay for itself and the rest so that the pressure was removed another way. That, my friend, is possible. A way off...but possible. Kinda."

And that vision, as the singing bowls sang, was etched on my heart.

No doubt as the fairy dust settles I'll settle too. Somewhere in the middle with my brain pointing out that artists probably have more financial pressure to deal with than your average desk jockey. That in the absence of a lottery win I would need to have A Business. That I'm almost 48 with a five year old child and three part-time jobs.

Still - as I look forward to having five days at home in which to finish off outstanding etsy orders and list new bits and organise myself -I'm sensing that some of that vision is closer than I'd thought.

Here's to daydreams and singing bowls.

x

Have I mentioned my Pinterest addiction today?

*Name the film and character and I'll love you forever.

Yes already. I know. I know there are things that I need to let go. I know there is a degree of toxicity to my emotional/mental/physical system. I realise that I need more water moving through me - I've dropped the ball on that one.

But enough with the sledgehammer symbolism. I get it. Can we please have our drainage system back? Kthxbai.

Oh and...respect.