Danger - rocks ahead.

For one reason and another its been a bit of a rough week. And its this week I find myself back here in the Sols without a planned trip home. Right now I do feel cut adrift and I have been wondering if that feels good or bad; right or wrong. It turns out, it feels dangerous. The kind of dangerous I've been talking to other aid workers about recently. The kind of dangerous that leads you to think it might be best to take mission after mission and just remain a visitor in your own parallel universe back home.

The issue of course is how I got to this point. A broken heart? Maybe. But there's lots of ways to break a heart. Maybe its just a layer of thickening on old scar tissue brought on by a little disapointment, a little bit of envy, and a little bit of grief.

As with all of these things, once recognised the issue becomes how to deal with what you've found; how to deal with the danger.

I found the post below on the great blog site "Le Love" and it reminded me that the danger is in the way we deal. It's really about lost romantic love - but it struck me because its a little lighthouse showing me the rocks that lie ahead if I decide the best way to deal is to weigh anchor; set sail.

I'm the queen of making life all about knowing how perfect I am in my world and how imperfect I am in yours. Yes yours, individually, each of you reading this. And so the way forward is to leave that perspective behind; to be the queen of some other, healthier point of view. To understand there'll be perfectly fitting glove of a life somewhere just waiting for my hand. Right now though, finding that perspective is proving harder than I would have thought.

the danger of a broken heart is not the pain.
not the tears, or anger.
not the ache, not the loneliness,not the quiet,
the empty seat, the bed now much too big.
the danger of a broken heart is what we have to repair it with.
mistrust, hopelessness, faux comfort.independence.
the oaths we take. what we swear to ourselves.
the danger is self-reliance.
the danger is that these stitches in our heart don't fall out.
that they are there to stay.because they must.
the danger is that we know it isn't about love anymore.
and,it isn't about how perfect we are in our world.it's about how perfect we are in theirs.
the danger is that two became one.
and a half of one...well.
half is not whole.
but now we must make it so.

Burning Bright Holes in Dark Memories

I have a decision that has to be made. To stay or to go.
The unkind will say that as a Libran I find decisions impossible. The wise will understand it just takes time while I weigh the options and consider the paths!
I don't know yet what the answer will be but I know that I have been meant to be here.. and that's something to weigh into the decision I guess.

As I was driving through the jungle this morning I paid more attention than usual to a great Eddie Vedder song I have on my ipod called "Rise". For me it sums up the personal transformation I feel I've had this year. I love its turn of phrase and I played it over a few times as I drove along - appreciating.. well eveything really. And that's the hard bit - I've learned a lot about who I am and who I want to be at home.. while I've been here. I guess I just wonder if I'm ready to be that me...

I guess I'll find my direction magnetically. :-)

Rise

Such is the way of the world
You can never know
Just where to put all your faith
And how will it grow
Gonna rise up
Burning bright holes in dark memories
Gonna rise up
Turning mistakes into gold
Such is the passage of time
Too fast to fold
And suddenly swallowed by signs
Low and behold
Gonna rise up
Find my direction magnetically
Gonna rise up
Throw down my ace in the hole

Tread Softly

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

W.B. Yeats

Opportunity

This week, the house I live in was broken into. I don’t actually know the sequence of events for sure but it went something like this..

At 5am I woke to a loud noise like something was pulling at or shaking the security screens on the front of the house. I was vaguely aware that last time I had woken to that sort of shaking noise there was a sizeable earthquake in progress – so I got straight up out of bed, grabbed my mobile phone which is also a torch and went out into the downstairs living room.

I didn’t really have too much of a look around (which in hindsight was probably a good thing) because I heard pretty loud footsteps upstairs and made a few quick assumptions:
1. The cat had been jumping against the screens – as it does when it wants attention
2. The girls upstairs had heard it and gotten up to let it out/in

I really didn’t think anything of it – so often in this house sleep is disturbed – so I went to the bathroom, went back into my room, put the phone on top of my laptop on the bedside table and went to bed. For the next 5 minutes I heard more footsteps above, the screen door upstairs open and close and the toilet flush twice. Ok, I thought – everyone’s up and has synchronised bladders.. including the cat! I must have gone back to sleep in 2 minutes flat.

When I woke in the morning and looked at my watch to see it was 7.30am, I knew instantly something was wrong. I had set the alarm on my mobile for 7. I looked around for the phone and couldn’t see it anywhere. Then I clicked that the laptop wasn’t there either. I panicked a little, initially thinking I must have bumped them on the floor and that my laptop would be smashed. But I also thought I was going a little crazy. I ran upstairs where one of the girls was sitting at the breakfast table and looked at me a little strangely. “My laptop’s gone.” I said and ran back downstairs.. which was when I saw it; the security screen cut and pulled back – and a hole sliced in the flywire – about the right size to let in a slight man or boy.

I ran back upstairs to discover that my laptop bag with just about everything valuable I own in it had also been taken.

The thing that played most on my mind right at that moment was that there had been someone in my room – only inches away from where I slept – and I hadn’t heard them. I think though, we protect ourselves from these thoughts. Even now, I can’t actively dwell on it. I don’t know exactly what happened (thankfully!) and I can’t play it over and over in my mind. I just know I am safe and things could have been much worse than they are.

You can imagine that the whole thing has been a minor nightmare in terms of police reports, insurance, cancelling cards, accessing money, getting back in contact with the world..etc etc.. but I search for the meaning in it all and I am choosing to see it as an opportunity.

You see, since this happened, I have spoken to so many more people about what is happening here in this country – about why and how crime occurs and about how people feel about it. Without fail, the first words out of every local person’s mouth have been “I am so sorry this happened to you”. Compassion and kindness have been shown at every turn.

I can choose to have this turn of events rock my faith in this place, in the people I have grown to love and admire – or I can see it as an opportunity to show compassion, to learn patience, to test trust. So I do. Nothing is so bad. I have another computer I can access to connect with my world at home, I have the resources to replace the mobile phones and other bits and pieces that were taken. I now have access to security and have thought a little more deeply about safety measures – and I am lucky with all of this that I can depend on these things. Others aren’t as lucky and don’t get to feel as safe as I do.

So this time, opportunity didn’t knock; it ripped a dirty great hole in the side of the house and came right into my room. But opportunity it was – to be thankful for everything I have.

Home is where?..

So recently, I went home. These days though, I find that concept a bit abstract. I have a home- one that I grew up in with my family; a place where my developing height was recorded on the laundry door frame, where a photo of me at my senior formal rests on the sideboard; where I helped to nurse my dying father and where the laughter of his grandchild now echoes. Though it’s changed a bit since I was there – it’s as much a part of me as a traditional home can get.

And yet.. I have another home. One that I bought with my ex-partner. The furniture that’s there was stuff we chose together. My books and photos are still there, along with most of my other “stuff”. The walls are painted in colours that my partner chose and applied the weekend I cheated on her and blew it all to bits. I own it and it feels like mine, but I don’t think I deserve to call it home. And when I’m there alone I like the feel of my things around me but it occasionally reminds me of the pain I’ve caused – so I slip away, and away, and away.

I rent a place back in Brisbane. A place I shared with my sister and her daughter. I really wanted to make it home, but it never really was. I love its high ceilings, its wooden floors and its huge verandah – but there’s too much disappointment there; it hangs off the walls where paintings should be. Everyone wanted a new start there but it seemed to be the place we fell back into old habits. It’s just a big wooden storage facility now- and soon it will house about a thousand students and the air will be thick with Patuli and Neroli. To them it might be home; I really hope it is.

And then there’s this place here- in the Pacific. A home away from home. A place I feel content and settled and happy.. but more or less alone. And that’s ok I guess because maybe in the end we’re all just our own homes; we spend our lives trying to find and physically create a place outside ourselves that matches the place inside – and then we get attached to all that stuff when all along, the most important things still always lie within.

And i’d like to think that’s true because it will mean that having had this time of communing with my self – and actually really enjoying it- I’ll be able to make home anywhere. I won’t have to drive from one side of the city to the other to find it and I won’t have to drag my “stuff” around with me. It’ll truly be wherever I lay my hat. Although, I suspect that much as I love that idea, we all need a base; somewhere our past communes with our future and lets us feel safe and loved. Home is where the heart is - so maybe that’s my problem.. I just don’t know yet quite where my heart will feel at home; where it will feel safe; where it will be nurtured and enjoyed; seen for what it truly is. It was used to living on my sleeve that heart – and it jumped its post a little too easily. So now I keep it tucked up a little and tell it to be cautious because it’s easy to get trodden on when you don’t have a home.

I think I like the idea of being like a Hermit Crab.. I’ve had homes and they’ve served me well and I have loved them. Maybe I outgrew them or a storm came and shook them from my back. I’m sure there’s a home with a perfect fit – waiting on a beach somewhere, just out of sight. When everything’s prepared, the home will appear.