new beginnings

There are very few things that will get me out of bed, with my eyes open, at 3.30am. In fact there are only two I can think of. One is a crying baby that needs to be fed. The other is Barack Obama.

I set my alarm, crawled onto the lounge and watched one man bring 2million people to a freezing city so they might bask in the warmth of his glow. And I'm not ashamed to say I was basking right along with them.

Four years earlier, almost to the minute, I was bringing my new baby girl into the world. I had been waiting a long time to meet her, but it was her patience that had been most tested. When the opportunity came she was here in an instant, and there were moments of fear and chaos before that tiny body was finally mine to hold.

She is still fighting to do things on her terms, and sometimes I can literally see the fear and chaos that the world represents to her. I want to protect her from it all, of course, but ideally I want to teach her that she can handle it. Better than she knows.

Today I received my first lesson in an anthroposophy course. It feels good to be learning again at a time when the whole world seems ready to change and flourish.

It seems to me there is no such thing as false hope. There is only hope.

Happy birthday, my darling Freya.

some days are diamonds

I want to turn the whole thing upside down
I'll find the things they say just can't be found
I'll share this love I find with everyone
We'll sing and dance to Mother Nature's songs
I don't want this feeling to go away

- Jack Johnson

Sometimes it's just background music. Sometimes it's a little bit more than that. And sometimes it just gets you in the pit of your stomach and your whole world stands still. Today I heard someone talking about one of their favourite songs, a small but breathtaking love song. They said they thought it could stop a city. I wish I'd thought of that.

I've been laying low for a while, doubting the value of words in general and mine in particular. But then I hear people talking, singing, and it's like stumbling across the Hope Diamond in the sandpaper aisle at Bunnings. You've just got to seek out the diamonds in the rough.

This feeling that I don't want to go away? At its core it's intense and unshakeable and it defies any kind of logic or mechanical thought you might want to apply to it. It only fades when my awareness of it radiates outward, into the mundane and the world where everybody else is sitting in judgement. I'm clinging to it for dear life, just hoping I can make it real.