Journal 20th November

Sunday 20th November

There's a big walk on today. The kind of walk you want to have a big pot of soup waiting for you to come home to. They are picking up the noisy redhead and taking some other kids with them. I have my shower so that the Lizzie stockings can be boigned on before they leave. They make my legs so springy, I feel like Tiggr. Still, not able-bodied or spring-loaded enough for that kind of walk yet.

But I get ready and go straight out for my walk too. I sat too long in one position last night and need to stretch and have some air. It's damp today and most of the snow is gone. Just the deep black ice in the courtyard hanging on. So I still can't see how far up the drive I could get and have to go the same way into the garden. I don't mind, it let's me say hello to the pillar box oak. Captain, I think, of this part of the garden at least.
So I dance with the whirling beeches, do the maze, watched by a cat I think is Zinga, but may be too pale to be him. Mystery soft apricot cat. I add 'Parting Clouds' position on to Commencement. As I start, the white clouds actually do part and the gibbous moon appears right in front of me, suspended over the hill. I feel myself draw her energy into the chi, and I can't stop smiling.
There is no separation.

Four colourful cyclists glide by on the road that cuts the hill in half, I'm level with them, the valley below us, and I think of green eyes. He cycles. I'm not sad exactly, I hope he's out and about and having a good cycle ride today, and that he's safe, but I find myself wondering if he thinks of me ever now.
They cycle on and I let that thought go with them. In this moment, I choose bliss, not suffering.
As I close the chi lifting and pressing down my hands three times, the clouds cover the moon again. Something touches me in the synchronicity of that. Something opens. As I walk around the garden new trees I hadn't seen pop out at me. Three brilliant white young silver birches, another, that I've walked under twice a day this last week, full of unnoticed warm amber-yellow berries, the pine hedge sending me a pulse of scent to look at it as I walk by, more and more scents pulsing towards me, a tall spike of teasels, how could I have missed all this?

Last night in the car, I told the gardener of the tree bark coincidence, he knew immediately which type of tree I was talking about. He planted the trees when his children were born.
I thought of planting a tree for my child, I remember that, but it seemed like something to do for someone who had died. Plus forgetting seemed the best way forward. How can you forget if you have a tree to remind you?
You don't actually forget, of course, tree or no. There's just a suppression that's a kind of burial. Of your true self. A denial. It's how the mind helps you heal. Or you would die of it. The pain. You would. You would just lay down and let it happen. Aghast.

I think now is the time for me to plant a tree. Get fit for a week with 'Trees for Life'.
Sounds like a plan. Plant them for everyone.
Breathe.
There are trees.
And they are Divine.

Standing in that maze today, closing the chi, smiling, full of the blessedness of being. I finally knew all the secrets of me. Of Being me. Of Being. I understood. I know.
And it was sublime.
The sun and the moon were opposite each other, high up, but I'm high up too, on the side of the hill. If I stood with my arms up, my body making a 'Y' I could have blocked each orb out with each of my thumbs. I don't want to though. I've had enough of the dark. I welcome their light. Want it to fill me. To glow. To let it pulse out of me, even if sometimes that light in me attracts the darkness that wants to drain it, it no longer can.
Because it's limitless.
My light.
I know that now.

I finish my walk, full of scents in the thaw, and go upstairs to my room to change out of my waterproof trousers. I lay down on the bed to put on some aloe vera gel and wake up two hours later. Big quiz night out and chi overwhelm a bit too much yet perhaps. But the body will be obeyed. No messing with it coz it knows best. Am happy to comply. No option really. Waking up I see that Nut and Nootka have joined me, one snuggled into my leg, the other at my shoulder. Cats are such a comfort and way better than a hot water bottle.

Hope it's icy again tonight. That allium would be spectacular with just a hint of sparkle.

I wake up starving and make a rainbow sandwich. Red pepper, green pesto and spinach, orange spicy Mexican tofu paste and hemp seeds. At least three chakras covered as well as all the major food groups.

I check my mail. Nothing from him, why am I so sad about that? Hanging on. Why could he not have had the courtesy to say sorry I can't write anymore? Would it have killed him to be polite?
Perhaps I shouldn't have said I'm going into hospital, but if you can't handle that, then I know all I need to know about you. Judge judge judge.

I have to keep reminding myself that I don't know. I don't know what's going on for him. I don't.
I wish I could get to not wanting to know sooner than I'm letting myself though.

There is an email from my brother though, with photos of him at his Hallowe'en party as Vicky Pollard. It makes me laugh and at the same time, fill full of tearful love for my brother.
I invite him to come up and visit me while I'm here, they are hill walkers and they'd love it here. Plus gardener has four motor bikes. My brother would talk with him for days.

I write for a while then go out for another walk. I meet the gardener and youngest son. They are pottering, lots of plans about repairing things but not actually accomplishing anything as they keep changing jobs. I don't want to interrupt so I don't ask about the guided tour he mentioned last night, plenty time for that, although I would like some company I admit.
Instead, I ask what the red berry plant is. A hermaphrodite holly, so it's a good berry plant. I forget what he said it was called, but it has smooth leaves, not a spiky holly at all. As we're admiring the plants, I meet one of their cats, it's wrapping itself around my ankles. I think it's Nut at first, but it's Rowan. Nervous and whirly round the legs type. She's lovely. The pale apricot cat this morning wasn't Zinga, it was McCavity, another of theirs. I ask how many cats there are between the houses exactly.
"I don't actually know, maybe ten or eleven.

The light is fading and it's only three thirty, but it's a damp cloudy day today. The Christmas cacti are flowering, pink and delicate. Slow day. At the quiz last night I learned that the fruit of the Blackthorn is the sloe berry. Perhaps why Dr Hauschka's oil is so soothing.
Better than gin.

I'm off alcohol until New Year, give my liver a chance to recover. Bitter things to eat, plus beetroot, to help it cleanse the anaesthetic and drugs out. General anaesthetics take six weeks to leave your system. Hence all the sleepiness. Am snoozy again.
I surrender.
Especially if the redhead is coming for tea again.

The sky is mauve lavender and so beautiful in the peace of the house.

We have soup for tea then I watch DVDs, 'Merlin' and 'The Box of Delights', laying around recovering, as you do. Sam Neill is a doll. Not lost my sex drive then.
That's a relief.

Text from LB that he wanted to phone tonight but is shattered, so he'll call tomorrow. How can you be so shattered you can't make a phone call?
That man needs to stop being vegan and eat some fish.

I come downstairs at 10.30 for a drink and the gardener and a chum are back from a bonfire evening. The chum rock climbs, the hanging on by your fingernails type of climbing. I say that I can't grasp, ha ha, how on earth it's possible, the not falling off part, and the pulling your weight up by your fingers. She says there's a technique to it, much of it is from your toes and pushing up with your thighs, not the arms at all. That lying flat out from the rock face, hanging on with a straight arm is more efficient that clinging on with your arm bent, as you suss out where and how to get your next hold.
Sounds like playing chess with a mountain to me.
The ultimate checkmate if you let your guard down.

Much prefer being a snoozy cat for the time being.