shapeofthings | Entries tagged with lessons

The world is beautiful/horrifying/amazing/appalling/inspiring.

Doors are closing/opening. Brain is ticking, ticking, ticking...

So much to take in/dispose/hold on to/let go of.

I need to sleep more. I need to visit the mountains.

For now... For now there is sweetness to be wrung from Lima.

So many lessons, if I can stay open to them.

Good things: kayaking in a green oasis in the middle of Lima, roseate spoonbills, cycling, the real world of Chorrillos, friends (Isotta, Daniel, Yeselia, Peter, Ruben...), teaching myself the quena, important lessons, planning big adventures (Amazon in May, Patagonia in November), kitting myself out with gear, learning to let go and move on, Neruda, love in all it's crazy forms, running English conversation classes at work, sowing seeds that change the way people think, presenting new possibilities, valerian root tisane (take that, insomnia!), lucuma season, china-town missions, skim-reading in Spanish, home-made pad thai, endless cups of tea, seeing parrots from my window, art that eloquently captures my thoughts, hummingbirds, learning to imagine a life outside of the system, serendipity...

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: Miraflores, Lima, Peru

I got an email today, from the blog:

Hi Toni,

I stumbled upon your site after you left a comment about salad dressings on Green Olive. I looked at your beautiful photos with a twinge of homesickness – I’m a Tasmanian who has been living in Brisbane for nearly 20 years now. I feel a pull to move back to my island home, having settled down with my partner and two boys to a semi-sustainable existence on Brisbane’s northside. The city has changed so much since I’ve been here, people are in so much of a hurry, and since doing a whirlwind trip around the state a few years back I’m now pining for the good life once again. Good luck with your blog, I’ll be following it keenly!

Belinda.

I love what I'm doing over there, sowing the seeds of change, growing pale green things.

***

In other news, I still have no back fence. The latest promise is Monday. Yeah, worst fencing contractor ever. Work continues to be somewhat insane and with never enough time to get everything done, but I got a pay rise today, and they're making it worth my while.

In better news the knee is definitely on the improve and is one of the few parts of me that did not ache today after taiko. You have no idea how happy this makes me.

Also, I wandered on down to a local school fete tonight, except it was a "night market", with stalls run by all the parents who actually produce things. I went purely for The Van In Black's pho (verdict: totally worth it), ran into a few people I know, finally got to meet some of my favourite Tas food & sustainability tweeps and scooped one of the major lucky door prizes! I won a night for two at a lovely looking Tassie B&B. Now to decide if I go alone, bring a friend or make a gift of it to someone who'd really appreciate it. Perhaps a weekend get-away with the camera and my note-book is in order?

My life is so ridiculously improbable. <3

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: The Mountain Goats - Pale Green Things

Taiko is the best therapy.

(i'm going to hurt in the morning in interesting ways)

Posted via m.livejournal.com.

This weekend there was insufficient time for doing and far too much time for feeling.

I spent quite a bit of it in the garden.

Current Mood: nebulous

If the slide's been long and all downhill, or you're bogged down in that sinking feeling;
When hope is sometimes hard to find, and it's been so long since the sun was shining;
Recall there's only so far you can fall before the ground comes up to meet you;
And sometimes when you're stuck down there, profound truths will come to greet you;
Take from the journey all you can, though you may not know it's value until later,
It is the trials that make the man, and these struggles will make you greater;
But above all this, please do remember, when you hit rock bottom to take a minute
And look back up on where you've fallen from to see there may be beauty in it.

xoxo

There’s a hole in my heart where the rain gets in, and the weather’s been inclement.

I’m feeling rather waterlogged and the smell is quite unpleasant.

The drainage works are underway, a patch is in the planning,

I’m sketching out a new design, but lately it won’t stop raining!

***

It's not a slump, a temporary state of affairs to be suffered through. It's a major shift, tectonic.

I discovered my map of 'how life works' was faulty, so I tore it up, and now I need to figure out (a) where I am, (b) where I want to be, and (c) how to get there. That means poking at everything that hurts to work out why,and grabbing onto everything that makes me smile to work out why (and hopefully not destroying it in the process). I'm ferreting around in my head to see what parts of the mental map were broken (Oh look, I have co-dependent behaviours. Ooh, I over-value a sense of security. Hey, when confronted with uncertainty I try to over-control everything else in my life.) and trying to re-wire them better.

This is slow, hard, painful work and I am an impatient person. There’s not enough shiny stuff going on right now to balance out the ledger, so occasionally I'm sinking down into the mire. But I WILL GET THERE! I will not keep cycling through the same faulty patterns again and again.

Things are changing. I just need to work out the shape of things to come.

Current Mood: determined

I live in a nice house, in a nice, quiet area, with good neighbours and excellent landlords. It's a luxurious house, really, by my standards. It's bigger and newer and prettier than I need (though really not well designed). But it's not a home.

Home is a place where the neighbourhood has it's own culture of integration, a community where people care to know you and look out for you.

Home is a place where friends and neighbours drop in for a cuppa when they're passing, or drop off some garden herbs or home-baked treats.

Home is a place that nourishes the soul as well as sheltering the body, a place warm with shared laughter and dreams, watered by tears wept with company.

Home is where you come to visit, and I feed us and we laugh and hug and dream of bigger futures and it doesn't matter if the paint's peeling or the door is cracked and I can hang my pictures on the walls and wander through the garden that's just a little over-grown and rambling in an enchanted kind of way. It's the place where the light slides in all golden and buttery, burnished like a well-loved soul, and the outside tries to follow it to feed on the joy that flourishes inside.

I want a home to go to.

Current Mood: thoughtful

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the quiet revolution

inspiration, aspiration, motivation

Entries tagged with lessons

WYSI(N)WYG

Pale Green Things

yatai = pain

For whom do you bloom?

Bottoming out

Notes from the frontier

Somewhere to come home to

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November 2020

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