Patchwork Feet

The clouds of monsoon start to curl over heads, slinking into the atmosphere, cyclical rainstorms which remind to us that we end as we began. Its very nearly a year since my first drenching. Its a strange set of circumstances which lead to a bemused relocation of heart.

When you leave home for the first time you punch a hole within yourself and it irrevocably becomes a subconscious mission to fill that hole, be it with food, art, an amazing book, an attractive biker, a bedazzling view; for me it was my itchy feet...sometimes we try so hard to fill that hole that we convince ourselves that we're happy. Then we wonder why our hearts are aching.

Through a haze of planes, planes and more planes, buses, boats and bikes; a tangled kaleidoscope of books, encounters, reunions and goodbyes, reunion, goodbye, reunion, goodbye, fantastical encounters with circus performers, a vague mugging, street fights, noddle soup, fluorescent seas and landscapes to melt the coldest, I turned on the lights and finally I arrived home.

Home is the ever running road; the fire dancers who carry their lives on their backs to enrapture themselves in glittering world immersion. The scientists, the singers, the biters and saxophonists all wheeling and trudging their way to the mountains, taking only the most absurd, fantastical route they can. Home is within us, wherever we find our hearts, home is the River ever winding and silently unstoppable. Eventually I stopped trying to fill the hole with what I was told I should fill it with and began patching it with every kind of fabric, every pattern I found in a tucked away market, every scarf tied to the back of a rucksack and now I am becoming filled with colour, reveling in rainbow souls.

Inspiration is out there, its waiting loudly and resplendent in sunset glitter. Find what it is that makes you happy, whatever makes you want to do cartwheels and throw your arms over your head and use it to patch yourself into a masterpiece.

In amongst the constant noise of deadlines, outside voices, expectations you have no desire to fulfill and pleasure pushed aside for pressure, we need to pause to remind ourselves that everything will be okay if we let what really matters in, if we just jump and let the universe catch us, if we let our hair grow long in the wind. Everything will be okay as long as we always, always remember to dance in the rain.


It helps if you're listening to: If It Makes You Happy - Sheryl Crow

(because no big decision was ever made without the help of Sheryl)

Building Nests

"What is the meaning

Of old tongues

Reaping havoc

In new places?...

Swoop down, find a stick, preferably small, maneuverable and strong. Take to your branch. Repeat until you have a solid, comfortable nest.

The following is a transcript of a diary entry a couple of weeks or so ago, so tenses and any notion of time has gone out the window on this piece:

"I am standing at my window, in my room, straining my eyes to focus through the fine mesh that does its best to keep our skin from bubbling from insects. I'm enjoying a swift, shuddering breeze; it doesn't happen very often. Cool air glides softly over the weather-beaten puckering of my face, fills my lungs with dry warmth, a freshness gladly welcomed, however momentary. Strands tickle my temples and nudge thought into action; "how very odd it is that a place once so alien and incongruous can now feel so familiar. It's almost as if I'm not afraid anymore, like I belong." Well isn't that a kicker?! Go back talk to Me three months ago, you would get only terrified babble and the belief that I will always, without changing, be an anomaly. See, the square never quite fit in the circular. The environment and I are learning to welcome each other. 

I say that, the heat still swathes me in callous reams of sweat and irritable exhaustion - I'm a joy to be with on hot days - but the air tries in earnest to apologise, to soothe with sporadic, blissful rolls of shimmering breeze. These cool moments are a craving, and while they don't happen often, they arrive precisely when they mean to, when they're needed and I can sense Thailand is accepting me, finally.

One, two, three, four months have steam-rolled by; each month the highest of waves, enveloping continents and I teeter on the crest, watching in baffled fascination. Four full months of changing perspectives, growing and forceful maturing, reverting back to selfish youth, picking up the pieces, dragging yourself on through your own mistakes and running to catch up with yourself, slowing to suck in the air as your chest pounds. Reinventing, re-evaluating, reciprocating, ripening. All of that in four months, seemingly repeating and repeating, is why the breeze is so coveted.

So with buffeting, twirling, elated times I've realised what we all do eventually, but which seems to be realised too late by many; nobody, no one in the ether has a single clue what they are doing.

Not in any negative, incompetency way - though for some, that stands as very much the case - but in the way that it seems people simply fall into life. We fall into careers, fall into luck, fall into misfortune, we fall into each other. I spent my first few months here thinking "I'm far too young and inexperienced for this, I don't know what I'm doing! Look at all of these people! They've all got it sorted, they know what to do, how to do things, where to be, how to get there...what am I doing?!" These "sorted people"? Well one of them is thinking exactly the same as me whilst picking up after the kids which have suddenly seemed to materialise in their life, and the other is secretly playing Snake underneath their accounting desk.

We're always too young for life, but that just means that we have no excuse not to play on the park swings, and it is through getting out there, seeing the world and gaining that experience of alien surroundings and dealing with yourself, that we become able to do the things our past selves' eyes would boggle at.

I'm standing at my window, breathing in Thailand, the fragrancy of realisation sweet in my grateful lungs." 

Right now I can hear Pe Ae chanting Japanese, the sing-song echo rolling back at her from the students, drifting down the corridor, letting the building rejoice in life. There’s a breeze in my hair, the birds’ wavering songs are telling me I’m right where I need to be. This world is my nest, and I have created my own to be proud of, to rejoice in, to feel the comfort of a country which once felt so hostile and is now my grateful sister.

...Ah, sweet mystery;

Come to break the frozen lake in me,

Shaking the foundations of the very trees within me,

            That the earth is the earth is the earth."
          

           - Grace Nichols; Hurricane Hits England