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This is not a prayer flag

blue and white

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

I revisited the video of the talk Mindfulness Stress Reduction and Healing given by Jon Kabat-Zinn and discovered, under the “related” links, a guided meditation session he also gave and was filmed at Google – Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn. He recited the above poem at the end of the session. Highly recommended.

So too is the talk by the extraordinary Buddhist monk, scientist, philosopher, author, photographer, humanitarian activist etc Matthieu Richard – Change your Mind, Change your Brain: The Inner Conditions for Authentic Happiness. Much food for thought and hope.

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Airstreaming

mirrored windows

I may not have a van any more, but I can still get a mobile mainline fix thanks to visiting my friend’s newly-acquired airstream!

there's rivets...

Or, as she puts it, “play in the Wendy house“.

oven

That’s the oven door.

We went down to its current mooring (for it is a land yacht after all) in the east end of London to check out the leaks, zap the mould, measure the windows and beds and perform other vital Wendy house-building activities. Oh the joy of it, the fixtures and fittings, cupboards and crannies.

With such a shiny subject I was, of course, in snapper’s paradise.

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Pro(re)creation

“So, will you have more?” she asked, lying back on the sofa and watching me playing peek-a-boo with her baby.

“God no” I said.

“Why not?”

“Well, first of all there’s the medication. Wouldn’t be a good idea. And I’m old. And even if I did ever meet someone, would anyone be good enough to be a father to the boys? Because that’s what it would mean, and I just can’t imagine it happening.”

“Did you want to have more, would you have, if things had been different?”

“Oh yes, I wanted a football team. I loved being pregnant, love babies and being a mother. It makes life so interesting and exciting, looking through the eyes of a child. Bloody hard work, though.”

She nodded. She too is a single parent.

“What about you?”

“I’d love to have more. If things had been different. But I don’t think I’ll have any. I know I couldn’t do it again on my own. I think this is it.”

I looked at her, beautiful, clever, funny, at least ten years younger than I am, sitting round-eyed and serious and looking slightly sad. The baby laughed, I merely smiled and said nothing. Baby and I returned to our game which now involved trying to lick each other’s noses.

“There are websites, though” she said, brightening.

“What sort of websites?”

“Where single mothers arrange to meet people for sex. One on a Friday and another on a Saturday, say. So they cram it all in on the weekends when they don’t have the children around.”

“Ah! well, casual sex, that’s entirely different. What a brilliant idea.”

We both smiled.

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Matching

j's socks

So clever this modern wool. One ball per sock, bog-standard basic pattern but funkadelic wool makes it look like fairisle and they even appear like a properly matching pair. Being DK weight (ie thicker than that of the other two pairs) they’re knitting up like shit off a shovel. These are birthday-Christmas-thankyou hiking socks for J, our new-year hostess.

Third pair of socks in less than a month. Where have they been all my life? Still, better late than never. The structure of them is so pleasing. Everything divisible by four. And no seams to sew up at the end, all marvellously 3D and sculptural by virtue of the nest of needles.

Next project has to be bed socks in the cashmere yarn I got in the summer sales. It’s a rather nasty colour, but it’s the warmth that’s the point. For ME. Because my feet get horribly cold in bed in the winter, and if I don’t make them soon winter will be over.