Happy accidents

Robin at Bird Tweets has invited a sharing of happy accident photos.


This is something close to my heart as many good things in my life result from happy accidents.


I am striving to make happy accidents my mantra so that I can let go, allowing life to dance and flow through me, filling me with joy and energy.

after your death

reading an email conveying
your best wishes and smile
i find sadness
and a wish


instead of holding back,
scared of the unknown
of not knowing how to act
what to say
of not being enough


could warmth
curiosity and trust
have unfolded more
of you?


or did you need
to fold back
into yourself?

Suddenly I remember to love myself.

Its been a tough year. Struggling with adapting to new ways of being, worrying about money and exams. Becoming more and more aware of the wounds of apartheid within my fellow students, then myself and then my country. Fear caused by ever increasing levels of violence. Academically gaining a better understanding of the dynamics behind violence in a divided country.

Reading about forgiveness, long meditations where I make peace with not knowing what to do, how to act, what I feel. The last rush through exams coupled with a friend's death, a car accident and discussions in which some of my fellow students expressed their deep mistrust and dislike of white people. Marking the essays of my students and reading of their initial impressions and mistrust of me. Getting deeply emotionally involved in group facilitations and loosing my ability to stay neutral.


A deep democracy workshop with a group of facilitators. That which was left unsaid choked the group into silence, yet we all voted, without reservation, that we were not ready to go underneath the waterline and confront what lies there.

Nightmares filled with violence and prosecution. My stomach often churning with anxiety during the day.

Reading more about deep democracy, children's participation in environmental education projects around the world and about the price I pay as a perfectionist, believing there is only a right and a wrong decision and that sacrifice is more important than pleasure.

Going on holiday with F's ex girlfriend and her boyfriend who believes in rationality and science and who deeply mistrusts spirituality and self analysis.

Giggling with my sister, delighting in the luminous beauty of her eyes, swimming in the river, watching the dogs running across a mountaintop with their tongues hanging out.

Loving and appreciating F more as I see him negotiate difficult social terrains with wisdom, vulnerability and compassion, falling asleep listening to the song of the river.

Feeling like shouting in the ex-girlfriends face and pulling her awesomely curly hair.

Driving home for 8 hours, having supper with my parents, getting home and falling into sleep.


Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, I feel a rush of love towards myself. This love is filled with acceptance of what is and who I am. There is also a deep gratefulness towards the me that gets up every morning, hoping that a better world is possible. One filled with love and conversation, change, miracles and creativity, joy and the possibility that today another dream might be fulfilled until one day all will dance with their full potential.

For trying with my whole heart and soul to love myself and life just as it is. For doing everything that I do because a part of me believes I need to.

I look down at my list of to-does and I realise with a childlike glee that cleaning the kitchen and study can wait until tomorrow or even the day after.

Peace is more than the absence of war

I've suddenly realised that rather than stop the war in my head I might replace it with the creativeness of peace.

We are of to the mountains for 10 days. I have so much to share but we have guests here from Germany and the words are hiding behind their mystery.

Wind pollination

Lately I have become aware that life does not consist of a number of static snap shots.


Then why this need to take a snapshot of each moment? To pinpoint it in time and mount it behind glass, carefully labeled? Is it the way the brain naturally works or have we been taught to categorise and store through our channels of communication, language, symbols, literature, photography, film?

For example, take my present moment:

Emotion: Apprehension
Place:In Front of F's Computer.
Activity:Blogging.
Companions:Wolf-dogs.
Curtains:F's Grandmothers.
Year:2008.
Day:Thursday.
Month:November.
Season:Summer.


Yet, within the same moment I also feel joy at the shape of a leaf. In addition, my position can bedescribed as next-to-the-comfortable-chair-in-some-unknown-dimension-of-time. And my companions? Do I label them as fluffy monsters or wise sages?


How does the need to create static images of time rob each moment of its fluidity and endless possibilities? How would our worlds change if we imagined our minds as weather systems rather than filing cabinets?


In our weather system each drop of water vapor transforms itself in an never ending cycle across the globe. Each gust of wind results from changes in pressure, influenced by the shifting heat and cold of the equator and the poles. These are in turn influenced by the tilt of the earth towards the sun. The nature of each vapor drop's dance with endlessly rising and subsiding air currents is further facilitated by warm and cold ocean currents and countlessly different terrain characteristics.


How could my current state of mind be seen as a moving, fluid, confused jumble of systems working in perfect harmony to transcend each moment?


In this moment I feel panic at being woken up by a phone call. The police. At my gate. Wanting a statement. Loosing my lawyer's phone number means having to wait for someone to phone me back. I fear that all might not be ok. I trust that it might.


I become aware of the warmth of my toes right at the tips of my thin olive slippers. A upwelling of affection rush through my heart at the creak of a dog basket.


Each cell in my body responds to cycling hormones, feelings of apprehension and trust, the sun slipping past rainclouds, practiced surrender, the wish to be outside, the wish to disappear into myself, the wish to rise above myself. A hungry stomach. Fantasies of crispy potato fried with egg. I dream of freedom from fear. I surrender to fear. Memories of yesterday's walk and the smell of wild-grasses on fur fill my mind. Outside the wind encourages leaves to fly free of their stems. Summer's green is everywhere. Wet blue clouds come and go.


I follow the journey of a fly across a window. Its wings constantly shift between gray and gold and all the shades in between. The same window is filled by a huge white cloud. Blue-gray with rain and sparkling white reflections of sunlight. My weather system shifts and changes. Its pattern are endlessly unpredictable.


ps. Sometimes, not always, just sometimes, shouting at the dogs, followed by a crying bout in the corner of the bathroom with an orange towel over one's head, does a lot more for ones general morale than a whole lot of weather analysis.

Observation

My stomach is churning.

Mostly because I ordered a decaf
and received the real thing instead.

To further aggravate things
F's mom bought a new laptop instead of paying the bond,
I received a missed call from the police about my car accident,
and I'm not sure how long I will be able to finance my studies.

I struggle to write,
a combination of not knowing how to start
and not liking what I start with.

I take a deep breath and I try to relax
around sensations of fear and insecurity.

Can I love and trust myself in the midst of my turmoil?

Can I leave the word "turmoil" on the page and move on
rather than worry about using such a overly dramatic word?

I will go outside, take fifty photos of the same tree,
and maybe my worry will dissolve along the edges
of delicate pink-green spring leaves.

I trust that each moment holds the potential
to be reborn into a world born onto itself.

If I was to write a poem to myself,
what would I ask myself about the many paths
my mind follow from moment to moment?

I would curiously inquire why
even my most lighthearted thoughts
insist on adopting a formal tone when addressing the page.

I would quickly ask
where my thoughts scuttle to
when it is time to reveal themselves.


Is it them peeping out from underneath
a heap of sweet smelling rotten leaves?

Tripling across the edge of the cloud, giggling
with relief at their timely escape from form and structure?

I will go outside,
stand underneath a cloudy spring sky,
close my eyes
and lightly ask
my words to dance around the forces of nature.

I am outside.


I follow the delicate lines of leaves
and the pulsating green of spring
yet the caffeine refuses to loosen its grip on my stomach.

Four hours later I start to feel better.

I am ready to admit that I am scared.

Scared of loosing our home.
Scared of not being able to feed my dogs.
Scared of doing the wrong thing,
saying the wrong thing,
feeling the wrong thing.
Scared of misplacing my future.

The scariness of life tightens the lining of my stomach.

My heart pulls back into my body.

The joy of life tightens my throat.

Its beauty implodes inwards,
spirals of gold reflect across my heart.

I love the unknowable mystery of life as fiercely as I fear it.