The Pits and Pieces

  The world seems to be completely off kilter. You feel it, don’t you? It’s as if the earth has come off its axis, spinning backwards into a darker era. I used to have one of those globes that you spun around. This was in the days before countries changed, split up, divided and became new countries faster than you could say Herzegovina. Occasionally the spinning globe (because I would spin it quite fast and vigorously) would become unhinged. Easily fixed. Click. Everything back in place. If only it were so easy today. Not so. There are no easy answers or fixes after the years of COVID, gun violence, war, racism, senseless killings and now, turning the clock back on women’s rights. No easy answers to any of it. And even as we tentatively emerge out of COVID, we cannot simply return to the way it was before, as much as some people wish to eagerly proclaim—oh yay, now I can go back to living my life as I did before. Nothing returns to how it was before an upheaval. Not in nature n

  How to do …whatever… in June: * Spend hours at the hairdresser (remember to take a book along) getting lowlights in your hair to remove the highlights you had done last year to blend in the grey. Look at yourself in the mirror, the dark strands, the silver, the grey and say – Damn! I still look good. Put your glasses back on. * Buy a clamshell of strawberries. Eat them all in a day and wonder why you didn’t buy more. Read an Instagram post which describes how strawberries carry their seeds on the outside (heart-shaped, open-hearted, vulnerable). Think– Damn, why didn’t I realize that before. If we’re going to eat something, we should know more about it. * Take a walk through a cemetery with a friend and admire the huge, old trees, the lush flowers amidst the ornate tombstones. Feel glad that you are not the only strange one who loves walking through cemeteries. Ponder with friend the houses backing onto here and how would it be to live right beside a graveyard. Disagree with frie

This weekend I’ve been attending zoom sessions of the CNFC (Creative Non-Fiction Collective) conference. I have a large exercise book that I use to take notes when I attend online webinars. Well, sometimes I take notes, sometimes I just doodle as I listen. In between sessions this weekend, I idly flipped back to the first entry in the book, made in early 2021 when I was attending a series of online courses on The Artist’s Way (for those not familiar with Julia Cameron’s Artist’s way it’s about igniting your creative spirit, more about writing than drawing). One of the exercises was to list things that would you would be interested in doing if you didn’t have to be perfect at it. It was one of those exercises where you just write, don’t think, put pen to paper without lifting it from the page. Among the list of things I wrote (early in 2021, remember) were:            Write poetry            Write a blog            Spend time in a small town and learn to speak the language

  Have you ever thought about all the things you know how to do and how many of them are self-taught? How many of them do you consider yourself ‘good’ at and how many do you do for the sheer joy of it, even though you don’t consider yourself ‘proficient’? I realized the other day that I am only ‘certifiably’ good at one thing – my job (IT) – which I went to school for and suits my natural logical, analytical mind and aptitude. All the other things I do for interest and pleasure – are all self-taught ! Painting – I learned through watching You-tube videos. I paint purely for the joy of it. There’s always music in the background when I paint and sometimes I even forget I’m hungry! Which says a lot about how one can lose oneself in something. Poetry – I’m just hacking my way through it. Trying to write it though has opened my eyes (and ears, poetry must be read aloud) to the poetry of others and how the exact right word, a nuance, can make a sentence dance. Swimming – Having learned as