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.