The aforementioned fallen beauty,

base view.
(Thanks clairex)

Hello darkness my old friend

At 21 minutes past 11 on Saturday night, the tipping moment came when our (us southerners') half of the sphere we live on began rolling into shadow. I can't quite get the science of equinox or the big picture visuals, but I do know that days feel quieter, more sombre, even though we are surely only edging our way into the dark by degrees.

Over the past week my own world has likewise dipped gently on its axis. I've felt curiously in a shadow-land, and have been feeling my way into corners where light is dimmed, and shapes are not familiar. The metaphor that's made most sense of this place is soil. I'm aware that most of our fellow flora allow their life to migrate down underground, and I'm wondering if winter's pull works similarly in us.

Ten days ago, and again two weeks prior, I took part in two ceremonies at two special sites where my sister Annie's ashes were poured (poured?!) into the soil. My unconscious is hard at work in dreams (including one where my own after-death bones were crushed) as I try to process this, existentially and emotionally. My conscious mind is wandering about, wondering how and where to articulate what this means for me, and for us. (We together diaried our shared journey through the final year of her life seven years ago. Surely there are words for this page of our story.)

Meanwhile, the darkness, and the deep dirt, have also become rich in meaning over these past days. A picture I keep returning to is the image of a fallen tree, which I passed by on a beach walk with two dear friends last weekend. It was a big tree; it had a wide-girthed, sturdy trunk. Its root system was beautiful - strong plump outward-reaching arms, some of which wound and interwound in a circular formation around its base, like a hug. Meanwhile the roots that went down, the ones designed to hold and nourish the tree, were thin and short - a spindly apology. I can't help thinking what a fine tree it would have looked when upright, with its fat roots bulging above the ground.

And so, in the middle of the night and adrift, I stopped tipping my chin up for air, but went down instead. What are my roots? What's going to hold me when the wind or the axe strikes hard? I can almost say I liked going down; being there with them.

Hello winter. Welcome.

tender

I feel like I've come to the end of a marathon. Not bursting through the ribbon (whatever that might feel like...) but knowing the finish line's in sight, taking my time in these last yards to slow down, slump a little, and entrust myself back to my own body. Right now that means giving myself permission to be in bed (at an unspecified godly hour), with a 'to do' list that's so pared back, its a hieroglyph. Even I can't work out what it means.

The reasons for the past busyness are multiple. I remind myself that at some level, all have been chosen. I am glorying in the recent decisions to take back my power, or rather to use it to make decisions that create space for the part of me that is 'being'. Occasionally I'm tempted to dream about the creative pursuits that I would love to follow up on. Then I'm aware that again I'm 'doing'. I have an image of me as rider and ridden; now bridled, I'm gently pulling - slower pam, slower... good girl. (Pat to the flanks.) Fetlocks - all four - can feel there's grass underfoot. Settling. Settled.

This slowing into more space and time, carries a sense of inhabiting a bigger envelope. A bigger place to breathe into. One of the clear night-thought whispers last night was: tend your body. Not a command. Almost a promise. My physical body, yet somehow more than this body, which time will reveal.

And (my hope) - all with gentleness. Tenderly.

Walnutty

It struck me again, as I was placing walnuts on my scrummy breakfast this morning, how dazzled I am by the relationship between cause and effect. I'm not sure if it's a brain structure issue, but for as far back as I can remember, I have struggled making the link that says 'this so then that'. My most recent reminder was the wow response I had when I was told my cholesterol, which had been out on all counts some months earlier (too little of the good and too much of the bad), had rectified itself. The surprise was not that it had altered (such magical shifts are the stuff of life) but that my GP was clearly convinced that changes I had made (like walnuts on my muesli and irregular morning walks) had done it. I felt like a three year old. So I did this!? All by myself? What a good girl! But not far under my skin there remains a membrane of disbelief. Two and two makes what? The answer's logical, but I can't 'get it'. I like to think that this awareness has bubbled into my consciousness because my syndrome is on the move. I wonder: if I could swallow and digest and feed my blood with this one truth, that everything, everything I do has impact, what would I choose? how would I live?

Hush

It's 8.01 on sunday morning. I've fluttered to my blog text box on a whim, on a wing feather caught in a light breeze. Appropriately, all I can hear are the tiny, sweet and varied songs of birds; many birds, who must be dotted through trees here and in neighbouring properties. Astonishingly (to me in this moment) I almost never hear this bird song. My morning ears are flapped in, attuned to the clamour and chat of my own head.

It happened again this morning, until I arrived here. "Do this, do that, slice that part of that day this week to such and such task. Get a pencil/ add this to the list. Oh, and don't go to quaker meeting at 10.30. Use this time to think more, to make plans."

Alongside this urgent nonsense, the small birds continue to sing.

And I remember again, that above all, (below all) I want to listen, to abide in the quiet. To exercise the gentle discipline that says hush, I have things to notdo.

Tuesday Poem: Alicia Ponder

Running away with a Christmas sonnet

by Alicia Ponder

Go kiss your prince beneath the mistletoe

And hang those stockings high above the hearth

For Christmas is the one day you can show

The greatest love of all and peace on earth

Still, I wish you would take your Christmas cheer,

Pack the day with bows and loving care

And bundle it so far away from here

And don't you mention Grinches, don't you dare.

For while the thought of presents makes some sing

And has the children dancing round the tree

Christmas makes me wish more than anything

That I could wash my hands and be set free -

Just wander off, enjoy the sunny beach

Forget the rules, and

lie

in the sun-drenched

sand.

Thanks Alicia for your poem. I love the way it slips out of of structure, and into a languid free-form where content and shape take on a perfectly relaxed ease... even sweeter to my eye no doubt, because I'm about to follow suit, and climb out of my rhyming couplet work life!

Alicia is a Wellington-based author and a regular on-line Tuesday Poem contributer. You can find more of her poems on her blog: anafflictionofpoetry.blogspot.com

Alicia's poems and prose also feature in 'Caught on Canvas', a popular art book about Wellington, and she has published several short stories in the School Journal, with more to come out next year in various places, including Australia. When she's not writing or coaching at Hutt Valley Fencing Club, she sometimes finds time to review the latest books at Rona Book Shop, relieve at Hutt Valley High School, and provide a taxi service for her two children.

Chrithmyth

I'm a stickler for writing things right. It actually feels good to own it out loud (even if I did play a bit loose with my grammar there.) I've been the boring parent who always responded "so much fun" to my children's enthusiastic "so fun". I've gaped at their father's loose edges around what's ok and what's not in the English language (he's a former English teacher, and loves languages.) That said, I have made some shifts these past years - wrestle, contort, surrender. One free-for-all zone is my telecom fone. (See?) ... except of course the 'you' word. That's still sacred.

The one other written word I hold onto with stubborn determination is Christmas (as opposed to the X version). This has taken some doing. I write with the speed of sound, mostly illegibly to everyone else, and I love getting to the end of a task as quickly as I can. But I hate the fact that this 'celebration', which does acknowledge a significant birth, has a popularised spelling that deletes the person - appropriately with an x, and usually a big fat capital one.

That said - I have been playing with a new spelling for this event. I've written it up there as my post heading. I think think this spelling puts some meaning back into what it is I'm experiencing. This sweeping madness, from which some of us take shelter, pull our hoodies over our faces, and others surrender and shop and get sick, is surely in response to a myth. It feels like it has mythological proportions. An unwieldy potent 'story', dreaded by so many, and with the power to disturb and unseat us, without showing it's real face.

Anyway, this year we're doing our wee bit to pull it out of the mist, give it a name and a shape that's human-sized. We're leaving town on Sunday and heading for a quiet spot in the bush down south for three days. We have not sent cards, not put up a christmas tree (though plan to locate a flowering pohutukawa by the end of next week). All gifts will be recycled (pre-loved by ourselves or someone else). And lunch will be simple. Merry Christmas.