A matter of time

Plus your Friday posy (a few days late)

Dear Creative Soul,

It is my birthday week and so I have been musing about time. How I use it. How I want to use it. How much time has passed since the day I was born at 9:30PM fifty-two years ago. How much has happened over five-plus decades. How much time I have left.

I have been musing about life - the frailty and fragility of it. About death - the inevitability of it. About loved ones I have lost and loved ones who are far away. About people in my life who are grieving. About people in my life who are preparing for whatever comes next.

I have been musing about living. About how I want to live. About phrases like “living life to the fullest” and “being grateful for every day”. About what I would do if today were my last day.

I have been musing that what I do with my time, however long that is, is more important than how old I am. About taking time and making time instead of wasting time.

Time matters. The way you use it matters even more.

Time is a gift. The way you receive it is up to you.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

It’s a bit late, but here is my gift to you, a posy of musings.

Saturday

My husband is clapping a tune while waiting for a shot of coffee to extract from the machine; the upbeat, lightness of the rhythm tells me he is happy. Which makes me happy.

I clap my hands; a fine dusting of flour falls. I work quickly, shaping dough into thin baguettes and slide them into a hot oven. We will eat these with dinner tonight - Greek-style chicken and potatoes flavoured with lemon and oregano, a side salad of ripe tomato wedges, crisp sliced cucumber, juicy green olives. Later I read The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri; my eyes fill with tears thinking of loss, trauma and an earth that needs action and love.

While vacuuming the car, I feel an inexplicable urge to cry; half an hour earlier, I was smiling and I don’t know whether it’s the ‘birthday blues’ or the full moon or neither of these, but it felt good to release the tears.

I am eating a slice of layer cake - chai with ginger cream cheese icing, drizzled with pomegranate syrup and decorated with thin slices of stem ginger; it is sweet and warm and decadent, the perfect antidote for tears.

I start to read my work-in-progress, feel myself pulling back. I have written to the unknown and I am at a loss.

Sunday

After coffee, we drive to the beach and stare towards the place where water and sky meet; the water is flat and glassy, and we wade in up to our waists before lowering ourselves into the wet embrace.

My new writing space looks out towards my garden; I am reading my manuscript when a movement catches my eye - a willie wagtail (djidi djidi) is dancing around near the herb garden. Another watches from the fence while a light wind spins our clothesline. I wonder how much writing I will do when my eyes are constantly being caught by life.

I am listening to Ludovico Einaudi and drinking a Tulsi Lemon Ginger tea; the warm brew tickles my tongue, the music calms my urge to walk away from the manuscript and do something else. I read on.

Against better judgement, I make minor edits - a word here, a comment there. I tell myself it doesn’t matter if I break the “rules”; I am familiarising myself with my story and this is how I do it. I don’t write anything today, but my mind is warming to what ifs.

Rain at last - enough to wet the clothes, not enough to wet the garden. But the smell of the air awakens a favourite word: petrichor. I roll the word around my tongue as the pavers dry.

Monday

Bird ballet in the garden: two djidi djidi chase each other in and out of exuberant bottlebrush plants, a dove daydreams in between sips of water from the bird bath.

I am waiting at a T-intersection, fingers drumming on the steering wheel, watching a too-fast car go by; above, Magpies, four in a row on a light pole, watch the world go by.

Red cap parrots have found my pomegranate tree. I reach for a plump, red fruit - there is a gaping hole invisible from the bottom - and I am grateful that there is more than enough to share.

I am looking at the world through rose-coloured glasses, bathing in the light of a glorious summer sunset.

We walk together in fast fading light, walking off a kookaburra opera fills the sky with territorial cackles.

Tuesday

It is my birthday and, instead of going to the gym before work, I take myself out for an artist date. I order a flat white and a maple pecan cruffin, sticky and sweet. I read The Way of the Fearless Writer by

Beth Kempton

about letting go of attachment to an outcome and I think that is what I am practicing here in this space.

My sister calls from Bali, sings “Happy Birthday” in her sweet and pure voice; I flash back to when she was about ten and sang a solo in a school production of Oliver - how proud I was of her that day. I picnic under a tree on a reflective sun shield borrowed from my car. Parrots chatter above. A siren wails. A colleague waves as he walks past. I wonder where my sister sits as we talk, and think about another favourite word - sonder - and how I am an extra in so many backgrounds.

On my desk there is a painting of a wren on a background of mandalas. I rest my eyes on this, a birthday gift some years ago from an artist friend, and think the mandalas look like peacock feathers. On my desk, another fairy wren, a brooch that says “Away with the Fairies” - a gift to myself. I wonder at the connection; the Animal Voices Oracle says fairy wrens depict spontaneity, creativity and light and I think of how I am honouring my creative side today.

Fairy Wren’s message is to have fun watching your creations grow into whatever they want to become. Dance with whatever comes up along the way.

- The Animal Voices Oracle

Later, walking in the park, my husband finds a large striped feather; we think it belongs to a hunting bird, a sparrowhawk, perhaps. We leave it on the grass next to the children’s playground for a curious soul to find.

My father calls from across the country; like my sister, he sings “Happy Birthday”, but his voice falters and he stops to catch his breath. These days we don’t talk on the phone for as long as we used to; these days, we talk about appointments and catching yet another cold, and he says things like “When I go to bed, I wonder if I will be alive in the morning.”

Wednesday

I make a smoothie - ripe bananas, oats, oat milk, peanut butter, the last of the frozen apricots from my tree. While the blender whirrs, I give thanks to the apricot tree outside. Lately I have noticed the leaves fading, falling. It is still hot, but a new season is stirring.

My head is thumping and heavy and I am having trouble concentrating at work; I want to go home, but there is too much to do, too many boxes to tick, too many meetings that could be emails. Too many emails. I remember a conversation from the weekend, after a day of pottering, and I long for the sense of unhurried doing to return.

At lunch, I take myself for a walk. It is not a pretty area, but not far away is a park, with tall gum trees that house chattering birds. I stand for a moment, eyes closed and breathe the headache away.

The sky tonight is a brilliant orange pink, one of those sunset skies that makes you stop what you’re doing. Life is too short to ignore a sunset like that.

A conversation with an old friend - we have known each other since we were ten; until the age of eighteen we spoke nearly every day, and I remember being inconsolable one time we had a tiff. These days we speak once or twice a year, but it always feels like it was just a week ago when we last spoke. Some friends outlast all life seasons.

Thursday

I am stretching my body, connecting mind and body I breathe into my back, and find a pocket of tightness that I can’t quite reach. I know it has to do with work, with a sense of overwhelm that comes from changing jobs, in the same way that the ache in my jaw does. I breathe an intention of balance through my body - within the next two years, I would like to be working three days a week, rather than four.

On my desk: a plant growing in water. A gift from my mother-in-law, who has just messaged to say she has brought me another gift, Wintering by

Katherine May

. “Her book has the quality of a meditation, a peaceful rebuff to life in fast-forward”, a Guardian reviewer says, and I am grateful that my mother-in-law sensed my need for finding a “peaceful rebuff” in my life.

We watch a TV show about Vietnamese food and crave it suddenly - the freshness, the tang, the colour, the zing and pop of lemongrass and ginger and coriander. We resolve to make a Vietnamese chicken curry on the weekend, and perhaps we will go to a Vietnamese restaurant tomorrow, our day off, too. What we really crave is change.

We are feeling stuck - stuck in a suburb surrounded by noisy neighbours whose loud music and parties overwhelms the wind in the trees, the birds, the breeze. Some days it is easier to feel acceptance of what is than others; my husband struggles with this even more so than I, but I carry his frustration too.

Earlier in the week, my daughter gave me a big, expensive box of chocolates for my birthday. My best friend has just called with a sad update about things going on in her life, things that will bring her great pain and loss and grief, and I think about Forrest Gump: “My mama always said, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.” And I wish we could share these chocolates and hug, but she is four thousand kilometres away.

Friday

I have been putting off lodging a change-of-name application for my land title for fifteen years because there is so much paperwork for one change; we drive eighty kilometres to deliver the papers and five minutes later it is done.

We eat lunch at a funky café called Robot Bun Factory; the wall is painted with murals worthy of a 1960s comic book, the bookshelves are festooned with toy robots from decades past. We are in our early fifties, and most of the patrons are our age or older, reliving their youth, remembering the days when robots and artificial intelligence was pure science fiction.

I make notes for an article I want to write, but the words won’t flow. I need to release the pent-up feelings from a tough week before I can release the words.

The rise and fall of four black cockatoos above our garden; behind them soft pink sunset clouds.

We drive to the beach before the sun sets. My husband dives into the water, swims into the golden pond; I stand on the beach, stretching, watching, feeling the warm breath of air on my skin. A man is fishing nearby; further along, a woman is doing yoga, saluting the end of a day. A family is playing with a frisbee; a couple stands waist deep in the water, holding hands. A word comes to me, and I know what I will write tomorrow.

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WRITING PROMPT: If you could turn back time, what is one thing you would do?