The shape of things

As a child, by dint of personality or birth order, I came to the conclusion that the only way I could change my world was to alter my perspective. I got very good at it. I reframed and reframed, concluding in one philosophical moment in my teens that the earth was in (one) truth still, and the universe twisting around it. My flexible paradigms kept me stimulated and safe from uncomfortable and painful positions, but I realised in early adulthood that ethereality had come at a price. I had given away my power. With some contortion and awkwardness, over many years, I made my way into the driving seat, and backed my own endeavour to keep my wheels on the tarmac, come what may. This is an oversimplification of course, but there is some usefulness in the metaphor that I was now driving my own car. I could turn the wheel, accelerate, back up, choose - and change at will - my destination. It is a joy to me that aspects of my dreams are realised, and I attribute some of that to my 'coming down to earth'. But at the age of 55, I find my existential position is changing again. I no longer want to 'get' anywhere. I have plans and hopes, but I am in a hurry for nothing. To move from road to water as context for my metaphor, It seems to me it is enough that I set my rudder, and learn to relax at the helm. In words that came to me in the silence of a recent Quaker gathering: Let what will be come.
(Forgive me if I sound like I have life wrapped up. I don't.)

stop, drop, ascend

The idea of upstairs has always held magic for me. I have vivid recall of my cousins' house, with its bridal-train staircase spreading at the base, my nana's flower strewn flight of stairs that rose sharply from her front door, the wooden staircase to my ballet teacher's sparse studio above George Street. In amongst the armful of dreams that I cradled through my childhood was the image of my own big house with lots of rooms - and stairs. Right now, decades on, I sit upstairs in my room, looking out over a valley to the tree-smattered hills on the other side. Is it magic that this longing has come to pass? Not only do I live in a large house, which is three whole stories high on the cellar side, I work in two jobs - one of the top floor of the tallest building on campus, and the other at the same level in a century plus old building in the city. Stairwells at every turn - not to mention the views. Recently I discovered a new magic that enables me to head on up. This one takes a gentle discipline. At 6 or 7 minutes past 8 oclock in the morning, amidst the flurry of getting ready to work, my aim is this: relax hands and position self in front of the bedroom couch. Bend knees and drop onto the cushions. Breathe. Listen. The NZ concert programme offers a beauty spot after the weather report every day. It's someone's choice of something gorgeous. The kind of music that makes you melt, that gets you, somewhere close to where those sweet saturating daydreams of childhood used to live.

whys and wherefores

'The online universe of blogs' - that's what Encyclopedia Britannica calls the blogosphere. I was intrigued that the term had found such a firm place in the dictionary and encyclopedic world. I shouldn't be so, I guess. The blog universe has been around for a while. It's me that's the newcomer. I can't get over this ongoing sensation that I've entered a realm that isn't real. And yet here I am, back in the zone, putting out another offering, and, (be honest Pam), delighted when there's a response. Often I have felt like a shy cook, slipping my plate of victuals onto the table with a self-consciously casual hand. Barely able to look at what I'd prepared, and astonished to discover that someone had come for a nibble. My first response to diving into this world was a huge sigh of relief to be back writing, and the small morsel approach of the blog seemed just the right proportion for me right now. It's taken not very long to learn that of course this is not just about me writing... it's about connecting. And that for me, holds both potent opportunity and pitfalls. I love connecting with people. I want to be resonating with the ideas of others - and for them to be resonating with mine. The pitfall: that I start to hanker to hear back from this non-tangible community, mostly neither known nor seen, who may or may not be reading this right now. That a blog of mine goes out and takes its place without any echo - that's ok. That's what I'm telling myself.

Kairos

My introduction to the word kairos came shortly after my sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer. We were on the phone in different islands, just days after the news that her liver had secondary cancer, even though no prior primary had been found. She talked about concepts, new to her, of chronos and kairos, describing them as horizontal and vertical time. We were blinded by (and blind to) the possibility that her life passage through chronological time could be cut short by death. But on the phone that day, as we talked about kairos time, we both 'got it' - the mystery and the substance. There is tIme that is yesterday and today and tomorrow, and there is time that is so imbued with 'now' that it's off the tracks, no longer earth bound, and ballooning with possibilities. In the subsequent 12 months we went on to experience, in parcels of shared days, Kairos's capacious and unbounded gift. Kairos has come unbidden at other times of my life, often in the company of crisis. It seemed in these moments that alchemy had taken place, transmuting pain to something redolent with peace, even joy. But the other beautiful and baffling characteristic was the altered sense of time. Was that a minute, or an hour or a day? Time no longer took me or, if in company, others, forward through time, but rather wrapped us like an ever-changing perfectly fitting shawl.

Recently I have been reading about the ancient Greeks who not only named kairos but gave it form. This given shape is intriguing: a winged male with a forelock hanging over his forehead and a bald skull at the back. The hank of hair, according to early writings, is an invitation - a lure to take action. To seize Kairos in our fist. The lack of hair at the back - a bald reminder that the opportunity can be lost. This odd and ungodlike figure, and the ungainly action he invites from us mortals, has given me pause. Rather than letting kairos descend (or ascend) like a divine grace, maybe I (we) can practice the art of getting out of step with chronos. Is it as simple as a reaching out, a grabbing, a resolute holding on? If this man has wings, I'll certainly lose my footing. Perhaps I'll give it a try.

Nert

I had a fantasy while on holiday (exiled from phones and computers) that I would next blog on ertia. It pleased me that there was no such word. I had the sense that I had made a new discovery. Liberation from the forces that bind. I found I was easing my way into all sorts of unlikely pm activities: cycling on bikes we had carted across the Alps to the coast; dipping oars in Okarito's Lagoon; walking steadilly up steep inclines to breath-taking lookout points. I was gleaming with the satisfaction of someone who was engaging with the physical world, and taking the body in hand at the same time. Inspired by a Doug Sellman book, I had even taken up a feminised version of morning exercises and stretches - sit-ups, squats, pressuppishes and the like.

What I have since discovered is the smooth slide back to what I now like to think of as the fulcrum of the inertia/momentum seesaw. There is little to boast about here in this straddled position, but there is a certain peace about not getting too surrendered to momentum, nor too stilled by that other force, unleashed by inactivity. The year has begun and so I give myself to what I must: my work; my hosting. I breathe deeply. I forgive myself for what I'm not achieving. I exercise heart and brain to remember what will really count this (and every) year: relationships. And ... bushy haired and creaky ... I still (20 days in) do my first-thing five minute Doug Sellman routine.

soundings

Perhaps I am not alone in this: I have a yearning to play beautiful music. It swells in my breast. I am a lovelorn Victorian maiden. I feel melancholy, I am filled with anticipation. Will my beloved meet me? ... This longing has been blossoming for years. It has seeded in the heart of a woman who is also unnaturally gifted in the art of resistance. I look with wonder, and some envy, as my partner flows to the piano like a bee to a flower, and sits for hours until a bodily need or wifely demand topples him from his stool. I know there is music in me. I ache with it. At times it pours into my hands. My fingers grow fat with a longing to draw honey from the keyboard. To suckle until the magic moment when that instrument can do nothing else but let-down with the sweetest of milk. I start to see now that we are in relationship, whether refusing or succumbing to the love call. It is mute when I am mute. If we are to make music we need one another: I cannot play without it; it cannot play without me. Tonight I sat down with a book. I played three inversions of two chords again and again and again. I stumbled about, brow furrowed, as the author of my jazz book called on me to start improvising on a five note pentatonic scale. A what? I have begun.

perfect imperfect

A woman I know who potted for many years passed on a gift to me in conversation. She told me about the singing cup - the object that emerges from the kiln so 'just right' that it sings. I've loved having a metaphor for this encounter with perfection. The notion that things are informed by spirit; that they shape up in cooee of an alignment, and sometimes reach that golden mean, at which point some irrepressible harmonics are pinged off. The flip side of this blog - and possibly the motivation for writing it - is that life is mostly messy. Wonky handles and bottoms that don't sit flat. At some level my life has been an uneasy ongoing non-verbalised interchange between me and stuff. I kick off my shoes with abandon, yet part of me wants the shoe family under my bed to line up and sing. I state my intention to make peace with the line in my recently laid carpet, but I still catch my breath at the threshold. I long for the day that my notes, journals, quotes, workshop jottings are ordered, but I routinely add another to the pile of indistinguishable warehouse stationery notebooks. Is there a song too in the muddle .. in the marred vessel that is PM and her world. Leonard Cohen says: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Perhaps this is my call to forget the perfect offering ...