Creating through the fog
When writing from the truth of today is more than enough.
As we turn on to the freeway I call my Dad. It always takes him til it’s nearly rung out because he’s always working away with his hands and he has that Boomer flip case that I swear makes it much harder for them to answer a call. I do that thing I do every time I call and wait for him to answer. Eyes well. Because I always imagine the day that will inevitably come, when he’s passed and I can’t do this thing that I love to do when I’m driving around sipping my chai, which is talk about everything and nothing for as long as my kids let me. He always answers and if he doesn’t he calls back in five minutes and I don’t have many people I talk to on the phone.
Sometimes I really resent being this way, so acutely aware of death, of impermanence. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just live, pretending that this is forever and that death will never catch me or anyone I love.
But it’s just how I’m wired, to know and feel that this all ends and live from that depth of place.
Last week upon leaving the pizza shop we’ve been frequenting almost weekly at times for the past few years, I cried…I actually wailed, the whole way home. I’m an Aries, so to love something the only way I know how is to love it all the way through, or not at all. “Please get a grip” my partner said, he could only laugh at how much this seemingly natural progression had broken my heart.
“It’s foggy down there, yeah?” Dad asks, calling from the middle of outback Queensland, currently on their yearly caravan trip up North.
“It’s so foggy, I can hardly see 50 metres in front of me.”
He can’t talk for long as he’s on a tour of an old general store but he is thrilled to know I’m driving down to one of Mum’s best friends house, who’s offered to have the kids for a couple of hours for me.
As I get off the phone and continue down the freeway, without the distraction of another my mind wanders back to wrestling with - what will I do with the time I have today? -
I have been sitting in the fog, in all ways.
Creatively confused, blocked, I’m just not sure.
After all these years it still takes me so much to sit and to write and more broadly, know that it is enough.
I have been wrestling with much self doubt, in this grey fog. Searching through the clouds for my clarity, for my confidence, for my gusto.
I have often wondered over the years what it would be like if I could be more prolific. Or if I could sit my impatient Aries self down to edit for once in my life. What it would be like if I could more curated, if my photos were more artistic or aesthetic? I feel like a hot fast mess when I create, my partner observes it as “steam coming off the keys” when I get going because it all comes out at once and my fingers can hardly keep up with the keys, much like what is happening in this moment.
I had a friend say to me once, in the aftermath of one of my classic very vulnerable very honest shares online, “you really do just write it and post it don’t you?”
And I do, I really do, did you know this? Did you feel this?
I hardly read over anything I write, if I did, I don’t think I would post anything because I would go too up into my head. I have to write without thinking. And if I write fast enough, I don’t think about anyone, I just feel…
[pauses to cry in public at cafe]
The emotion is in the relief this gives me — as someone whom in day-to-day finds it
challenging
to
stop
thinking.
My daughter said to me this morning after I screamed at my son for drawing in texta on the couch, “it will be nice to have your time today mummy, what will you do?”
I smiled, “I’m going to write today”
“Writing, isn’t that boring?!” she asked, puzzled
“You know how you like to do all your crafts and that fills your bucket? I like to write, it fills my bucket and makes my mind feel all calm.”
I have been wrestling with many ideas and so in the fog, of mercury retrograde, of this big month astrologically, when I can just sense, so much is moving under the surface without even having the words for it - have you felt it too?
[I’ve loved Steve Judd & Pam Gregory’s transmissions, have linked them just click on their name there if you like to receive them on youtube]
I have been wondering if just to write from today is enough.
My Mum’s best friend asked as I was leaving to walk down her street to the cafe, “you sure there’s nothing else you want to do?”
“I’m sure” I said, with a soft and grateful smile.
Because there is nothing I’d rather do on this Thursday, a week and a half into a deep and hearty school holiday portal with my kids, than to walk to the cafe by myself, be offered the best table in the house, enjoy my coffee,
and write from the truth of today,
ordinary,
as the sun breaks through the clouds,
extra-ordinary.