Ambling

I seem to have inadvertently switched my hamstrings for a pair that are several sizes too small. Ouch. Tried stretching them out by ambling around Antony today. They've got incredible trees in the gardens there. Simply beautiful.

Beauty – Grace Nichols

Beauty

is a fat black woman

walking the fields

pressing a breezed

hibiscus

to her cheek

while the sun lights up

her feet

Beauty

is a fat black woman

riding the waves

drifting in happy oblivion

while the sea turns back

to hug her shape

Distractions

I’ve been so distracted this week that I never got round to updating on here. I’ve been reading lots, practising some Spanish and relishing in the rain that has come just in time to save the vegetables in the garden (and they are delicious -homegrown veg tastes so good!). I’ve surprised myself by really enjoying growing veggies this year. I don’t have much interest in growing things that can’t be useful, but it’s been a very interesting experiment that I’m thinking of expanding this autumn.

I’ve got some fascinating books on the go at the moment: The Cage by Gordon Weiss, which is about the conflict in Sri Lanka and I would really recommend it; Sacred Sierra by Jason Webster, about his life on a mountain in Spain; some Schopenhauer, some Rilke…and a wonderfully light read by the wonderful Lloyd Jones called Here at the end of the world we learn to dance. Love it.

The spiky massage ball that I’ve been using on the muscles around my hip really seems to be helping a lot, so I’m moving around a lot more than I have been in recent months, although it’s still quite exhausting. This newly found freedom, plus my reattachment to yoga and recently discovered interests in both organic growing and meditation are leading to new possibilities for autumn forming in my mind. I’m reconsidering uni in favour of working for an environmental organisation in Spain that I’ve wanted to visit for years and years. Either way, autumn is now in sight, and that makes my impatience with my hip easier to manage. It’s great to have a goal, even if I’m not quite sure which goal to aim for yet.

Here's a lovely Rilke poem I came across yesterday:

Whoever you may be: step into the evening.

Step out of the room where everything is known.

Whoever you are,

your house is the last before the far-off.

With your eyes, which are almost too tired

to free themselves from the familiar,

you slowly take one black tree

and set it against the sky: slender, alone.

And you have made a world.

It is big

and like a word, still ripening in silence.

And though your mind would fabricate its meaning,

your eyes tenderly let go of what they see.

Milestones

Just walked 2 miles around a lake. No crutches, no painkillers. I would never have thought that could feel like such a huge milestone, but all these joint problems have made me realise how much I take for granted. What a perfect afternoon.

Finland

 

 

 

Sauna at Villa Elba, Kokkola

My thoughts are drifting to Finland today, with the places and many wonderful people I met there. I hope you are all well and happy. I'm sorry to have not seen you in so long but I think of you often, with a smile, and feel inspired.

Sunset in Naantali

Drawing lines in the cold, damp sand

She forms the words that lie softly on her lips,

As if those she loves will read them

All those thousands of miles away.

These thoughts,

Soon to be written into deep white waves

And whispered to the ears of distant shores.

She stands small and alone,

A pale figure in the midst of this open beach,

Calmly singing her hymns to the sea.

Spanish lesson for the day

Even more than the bizarreness of the story that a luggage thief in Barcelona hid in a suitcase to get inside the luggage compartment of an airport coach, I love El Periodico for producing a 5-stage diagram of how it was possible:

http://estaticos.elperiodico.com/resources/pdf/8/4/1307480433648.pdf

 

10 years of ballet black

10 years already? Really?! If only they had more performances over the summer...

http://www.balletblack.co.uk/index.html

Hips, Yoga and Fidgeting

"Remember to fidget"

Ah, the voice of reason. Not that I've ever needed any encouragement myself, but it is the kind of thing that gets you scowled at surprisingly often. Along with some praise for yoga and a spiky rubber massage ball seemingly designed to inflict pain on muscles people never knew they had, it's been an interesting morning.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I'd never even realised that hypermobile meant anything more than being a bit flexible but a bit of googling has proved that's not necessarily the case. I'm desperately hoping that 'third time lucky' applies to diagnosis as much as anything else, and that I'll get my hypermobile joints back under control sometime soon with a bit of physio, some lovely yoga and a lot of fidgeting.