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 ...

Digging the dirt

My Pen friend, who is an explorer of things astrological, tells me I have no earth in my mix. I am unsure whether to feel short-changed or special. I am also unclear whether this great whack of other elemental influences leaves me with a compensatory job to do in this life. Would it be soulishly good for me to get more dirt under my fingernails; to fork the compost; to talk to my vegetables. It is true that I am growing to love my garden; I love the way it keeps delivering up new and ever-changing displays of colour and form. My confession is that I have no, and I mean no interest in harvesting food. In an act of compliance with all that I reckon I should (of course) do, I have prepared a plot, with 100 percent contribution from my seaweed hunting, pig poo dumping daughter, and a month or two ago I planted some vegies. Tellingly, I didn't plant the plastic descriptors, and there are some I can't recognise. Now I visit it only occasionally, driven by a sense of duty. I have little hope or expectation of produce. My fingers would far rather be tapping on this key board than dangling in the soil. Am I resisting the opportunity to align more deeply? Would the greening of my thumbs nourish my soul as well as my body? Would I be a better ecofriend? In my piscean way, I would rather float on the questions than dig for the answer.

Mattering

A person close to me, who is unlikely to ever view this blog, has a magical and unsettling relationship with matter. Things disappear, then reappear. It would be easy to blame this improbable phenomena on faulty perception, due to her many summers. I know better, because I too experience this mystifying reality. The person in question rationalises it, with a feather of mirth and a pendulum weight of conviction, as the work of a thief. It is a family tradition. Her own mother talked of having undergarments stolen by a fellow resident in the old people's home, then was further amazed at the cheek of the woman when she returned them to the same drawer. I laugh, and I don't laugh. I have the sombre knowledge within me that my day will come when antimatter eats even more of my stuff, and I start to attribute it to others, in an effort to make sense of it. My current looseness around existential mysteries means I am able to go with the flow. To accept that things will come and things will go. That the sock, the earring, the keys, are changing their nature, all simply as a manifestation of the inexplicable of life. Physics has reassuringly discovered that all substance is energy. That things would be visible sometimes, and not at others, make sense. Kind of.

What's the word?

For almost as long as I can remember, I have have felt an urge for community. And accompanying this pull, for nearly the duration, there has been a hint of shame, or shyness, that it should be so. Surely this was an odd thing. A desire that one confessed to, rather than celebrated. Autonomy, self-efficacy, independence, even inter-dependence - these were healthy aspirations. But the longing for tribal connections ... you grow out of those things, don't you? Well, not me! There - it's out. The truth is that I mourn for something. Something I think we may have lost in the crazy diaspora of the last two of three centuries. I have roots in me; I know this because I feel their ache for the old soil. Locked into this weird and knowing DNA of mine there is a memory, so it seems, for living differently. Living in a smaller, more constant, more familiar and connected world of people. There is an African saying (exact origin unknown) - 'I am because we are'. Perhaps this is a universal truth. I know it each time I re-experience the joy of linking with friends to talk about our lives and share stories. I was delighted recently to learn the word homonomy. I was told it meant the desire for community. Aha. My visceral instinct was now named and tamed. I embraced the terminology and its meaning. More recently still, I've found, or not found, its source. I can't find the word in the dictionary - it's simply not there. So I wrap a blog post around it instead.