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journeys

creativity inspiration & influence introversion

A sense of home

August 3, 2015

 

I’ve been working away from home and travelling a lot as part of this work role. This past week, I was in a different town pretty well each night. So it was with much pleasure that I arrived home on Friday night with a few days in my blessed and special home and village.

It’s hard to describe what makes a sense of home but loved ones being there or close by is a central ingredient. For my home and village, it’s the sunshine, the water, the birds that visit that like the kookaburra above who joined me for my breakfast on my return, my personal library of favourite books, the feel of familiar carpet and river slate tiles under my feet, my own bed, a warm bath and trees outside every window rustling in an early August breeze. And it’s all blissful.

I’m lucky. I live in a special place, a village I choose to call home that is surrounded by beach and bush. As an introvert who works hard with many people interactions in my day job, both my village and house are places of retreat and recharge. A place to rest, walk, feel the sand under my feet and the water flowing over them; a place to read, write, reflect; a place of solace and replenishment; of good food, words and wine; and a place to be myself with people who love me.

IMG_3641Being away so much and coming back, it’s easy to focus on what is not right: the weeds in the garden beds; the renovations still not finished after months of weekend work; the stuff that’s not tidy or finished; the clutter here and there. But this weekend has been about focusing on what is right and perfect now in this house, this village, my life: a loved and loving partner; a gorgeous independent daughter with so many skills, passions and opportunities; my gentle beautiful mother; the view, the trees, the beaches and bush, the books, the creative inspirations and connections and my independence to explore it all.

I’ve gone back to a couple of my favourite authors too in coming home: May Sarton and Marion Milner, both of whom wrote journals and explored a sense of home and happiness. Their words are thoughtful and reflective identifying the passions and the hopes in being and coming home:

My daydreams are nearly all of country cottages, of little gardens, of ‘settling down’ with flowers in vases and coloured curtains. I don’t think of backaches, dish washing.

I want to live amongst things that grow, not amongst machines. To live in a regular rhythm with sun and rain and wind and fresh air and the coming and going of the seasons I want a few friends that I may learn to know and understand and talk to without embarrassment or doubt.

I want to write books, to see them printed and bound. And to get clearer ideas on this great tangle of human behaviour.

To simplify my environment so that a vacillating will is kept in the ways that I love. Instead of pulled this way and that in response to the suggestion of the crowd and the line of least resistance

From “A Life of One’s Own”, Joanna Field (Marion Milner), Virago Press, p 51

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my ‘real’ life again at last. That is what is strange – that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and ‘the house and I resume old conversations’

From ‘Journal of a Solitude‘ by May Sarton, Norton, p 11

I also remember that the book I am currently reading is ‘Coming Home’ by Rosamunde Pilcher. Home and the significance of its sense of place in the midst of coming and going and change is clearly on my mind and I am seeking its comfort in both a physical and spiritual sense. I take these reflections with me as I head into a new week and new month full of opportunity.

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family history transcending

The journey back

October 7, 2012

To forget one’s ancestors is to be a brook without a source, a tree without a root.

Chinese proverb

It was a day when I felt a bit lost. For a number of reasons, I was drifting, moving between, floating, without roots, between one place and another, one state and another.

As a result, I ended up with one precious commodity – time – something that seems so scarce: some wide open, spaced and sacred time to fill. Though not in the best frame of mind, I set out to fill it in a meaningful and productive way. I was driving, heading west into the sunshine and mountains, music sustaining me and opening me up as it always does; Tom Petty singing:

It don’t really matter to me baby,
You believe what you want to believe,
You don’t have to live like a refugee.

And then Echo and the Bunnymen pumping out:

If I said I’d lost my way
Would you sympathise
Could you sympathise?
I’m jumbled up
Maybe I’m losing my touch
I’m jumbled up
Maybe I’m losing my touch
But you know I didn’t have it anyway

Won’t you come on down to my
Won’t you come on down to my rescue

Then Matchbox 20:

Baby, baby, baby
When all your love is gone
Who will save me
From all I’m up against out in this world

It was that sort of day, the music and lyrics exactly corresponding with my somewhat disconnected state; the sunshine somehow leading me along.

It felt like a day for investigation, with the gift of time to try to find an answer to a puzzle about one of my ancestors; it’s a branch of the family I am particularly drawn to, as if working to understand their story might help me with my own. They lived and worked and in some cases, died, in the country I was driving through so I took a detour to try to find them. I found the old graveyard I was looking for, hidden behind a high hedge,  so many souls buried in the sunshine, the stones standing still and quiet as if patiently waiting for my attention.

I wandered through the rows of washed out stones. There were so many of them I couldn’t read; they were covered with moss or lichen or the words had vanished, weathered and erased away, the story lost. I felt for the lost words with my fingers, trying to trace the story and bring it back. But sometimes there was simply nothing left except a rock, blank and weathered. And sometimes there was less, just a grass space, unmarked between other stones.

I found some connected relatives including my third great grand aunt, Ann Sweet nee Honeysett, who came out in 1839 on the same ship as her sister, my great, great, great grandmother, Jane Colbran nee Honeysett. I have chased their story to Herstmonceux in East Sussex from where they departed to Richmond in NSW where they ended up, carving a new existence in a new place. The enormity of their journey and the extent of the ties they severed never fails to amaze me.

I know much of Ann’s story, her leaving, her arriving, her new family, its background, her children, the sad events, the new beginnings. I know it better than my own great, great great grandmother’s story which still has huge gaps despite my searching. It was good to find Ann’s resting place, other members of the family close by, a part of the mystery I am trying to understand.

Whether it was the sunshine that bathed my pores as I walked around scouring the old stones, or the act of connecting with these souls and their history, I found myself strangely grounded, blossoming in the linkage, surrounded by the ones I seek but cannot exactly find the truth about. An invisible thread linking us, a few degrees of separation joined and resulting in a stitching of myself.

Australian actor, Vince Colosimo, in a recent ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode, talked of a sense of finding his team as he searches for his family background. I know this feeling. As I have lost people in my immediate family, the desire to know more about my broader family history and the qualities and experiences of my  ancestors has strengthened as I search to know the roots of my own journey. A sense of teamwork in getting me through much suffering has been part of this, as if they are somehow helping me along.

So less of a refugee, less in need of rescue, less in need of bright lights and touched by the sun, I climbed back into the car re-energised and continued on my drive with the sound of bell-birds, the lean of curves and the guidance of trees taking me back to my temporary home. It’s as if the act of remembering, the conscious act of seeking my ancestors, my silent team of supporters, cast something of a connecting spell on the present time and I was carried up and forward once again.

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music & images

Contrasts

September 2, 2012

If I summed up my life in one word at the minute, the word would be ‘contrasts’. So many contrasts, so many diverse experiences: temperatures, travel, people, locations, meals, seasons, time alone, time with others, visuals and words.

I’m living and working away temporarily at present, so life is different; taken out of my usual surroundings and contacts. I’m in the same organisation, but in a different role, a different town, a different climate and working with new and different people.

It tests you, being out of that familiar zone of the constants of your workplace, away from the home you are accustomed to returning to each evening and all the people you are used to seeing in your daily routines. In a strange and contradictory way, it brings you back in touch with yourself as you become the constant in a swirl of change and contrast.

In the past two weeks, I have:

  • had my feet in both the  city and country, moving back and forward between them
  • seen snow, sunshine, warm days and sleeting wild winds, some days experiencing a 25 degrees (C) difference in temperature
  • felt the beginnings of spring in a cold climate and a town where the trees are still mostly bare
  • enjoyed a full garden of spring flowers in the city in a warmer climate where the season is more established
  • spent many hours on my own as well as meeting dozens of new people through my job role
  • focused on visuals more than words generally; this is the ‘August Break‘ influence and I have been seeing more, stopping to see the contrasts, reading and writing less, and taking more photographs
  • savoured beautiful regional wines and food whilst other times eating woefully boring meals at the end of a busy work day when there is not much energy left for cooking

And today, spring breaks through from winter’s grasp here and the day is gloriously (relatively) warm and full of a sense of blossoming.

So what’s settling me in the midst of all this contrast and change:

  • the anchors of my loved ones
  • the daphne bush in the garden here and the sprigs of daphne in the house shooting their fragrance through the air
  • the pieces of home I carry with me: a ‘French Pear’ candle, my jewellery, my scarves, my music
  • the electronic devices which connect me wherever I am
  • the cameras I am one way or another carrying with me and using to stop and record the contrasts
  • the beautiful wines of the region accompanied by the freshest produce: apples, pears, asparagus, cheese
  • the freshly roasted coffee in the cappuccino that I pick up on the way to work
  • the books, sudoku and blogs I enjoy that keep me grounded
  • my online friends from ‘Blogging from the Heart’ who keep me inspired and committed here as I weave blogging in and out of my busy life

What contrasts are you enjoying and how are you keeping settled in between it all?

I’m breaking through,
I’m bending spoons,
I’m keeping flowers in full bloom,
I’m looking for answers from the great beyond.

from U2 ‘The Great Beyond’

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