Nourish Me

teaching

It's hard to know who's out there reading anymore - when the blog began it was mostly traffic from the U.S. I've never been much good at checking stats and stuff, but anyway, just putting this out there in case there are any readers in the Macedon Ranges. You never know, right? 

I'll be teaching my first FREE mediation class from the 17th of July at Kyneton Community House. You can check out the deets on their website, and don't worry, you don't need to tie yourself in a yoga pretzel like the lass in the picture - I certainly cannot - as it's all about ease and comfort with me. See you there, perhaps. 

xx 

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more open of heart

Occasionally it feels as though rural life is a little beyond me. A calf was lowing for her herd, wandering aimlessly up and down the hill late last week as I huffed and puffed my way back home in the early morning mist. Poor girl, she'd been left alone like that for two days. I've been hearing gunshots in the forest of late when I'm out walking, the kangaroo-culling variety cracking the morning stillness, stopping me in my tracks. Their soft bodies are thrown on bonfire piles waiting for the burning off season to get into full swing. Brutal, but there you have it. Life on the land.

This limited country knowledge means I don't know which farm to ask about her welfare - those guns say fuq off in a very particular way. Thankfully I saw her in a paddock with her family this morning, a fact that made me happier than I'd imagined. She ignored me of course, which in a way makes her adventure seem less traumatic to me. 

I've been thinking a lot lately about family, about finding your herd, your tribe, and feeling loved. Edward rang to say Happy Mother's Day yesterday, a loving kindness that assuaged some of the feelings that have been welling in me for about a year or so, big questions about why I seek the affection of disinterested peeps. How lovely it was (is!) is to be valued for the step- role I've played for 18 years. I've had a couple of run-ins with Qi Vampires of late, encounters that keep me awake at night. Lots of time to think, naturally, staring at the ceiling at midnight and I've just realised that the older I get the more empathetic I'm becoming, softer at the edges, more open of heart. Not such a bad place to be, but I need to protect those treasures. 

I wish I had a recipe to share, but I just make the same things on rotation; baked beans, kale and pea burgers from a Donna Hay magazine, minestrone, tray after tray of roasted vegetables. I'm hoping my cooking mojo returns with the cooler weather that is, at long last, upon us. What have you been cooking, tribe? 

 

 

 

meditation

The thing that gives me the most solace in life is my meditation practice. It is both the easiest and most challenging thing I've ever done and I  rather like that the first time I talked about meditation was right here in 2012. Which means I've been meditating, with varying degrees of success, for more than seven years. I'm nearly at the end of my basic teacher training, and it feels like the Truest Thing I've ever undertaken; I'm surprised by how much I've learned, but equally surprised by how much more there is to learn.

I am told that that the longest recorded time a human being spent without a single thought coming into their mind was 15 seconds - the guy was a monk who'd been meditating every day for 50 years. This is both amazing and deeply humbling. 15 seconds. The record. Talk about #goals. It is helpful, I think, to know what meditation is NOT about as well as what it is at times. An empty mind is not the goal, rather a less reactive, more focused one.   

I'll be teaching soon, yay, so I've created a site here if anyone's keen : meditation  

 

decluttering

Dark Moon decluttering is a monthly routine 'round here, a ritual clean out/tidy up/rethink that helps me honour the cycle of the moon. This month's a digital declutter - I don't own enough stuff anymore to go all Marie Kondo - but, urged on by flickr's slightly panic-inducing new policy of their own decluttering, I decided it best to look at what I could download and or delete. It's been interesting. I found photos taken with the camera I started this blog with, a beloved lumix point and shoot that I handed on to someone who no longer wants my friendship. I miss the camera. The person? Not so much. 

And I see how curious my art-school-trained eye was, how hungry I was for making pictures after such a long self-enforced hiatus. I loved the weird little moments of cooking that would stop me mid-chop. Still do, if I'm honest. Weird Little Moments are good.    

 

rabbit hole

I rise early each morning, turn right out of our gate, and walk to greet the sun as it rises over Mount Macedon. The stretch of road traversed is never busy, even less so at that hour. There are roos and birds, cows and calves who take varying degrees of note at my human presence. I love this ritual: for fuq's sake, I think smugly, my life is so damned clean these days. I find myself collecting rubbish, the evidence of all our dietary scourges laid bare on a country road - iced coffee containers, cans of beer and empty bottles of wine. Who throws a bottle of wine from their car window at 100 km's an hour? 

Next door have two gorgeous children, a sweet baby girl and a properly leonine four year old son. Their mother is a scientist and a deep, watery piscean thinker. We spoke briefly the other day, both noting the dryness, the heat. She confessed how terrified she was for her children's future, having falling into a rabbit hole of current climate change research. Without children of my own, I can only imagine what it feels like - an absolutely fuqing terrifying prospect.

It feels ever more urgent that we try to patch this whole mess up as best we can. We gen x-ers like to blame the baby boomers for all of our problems, but my generation must step up to bridge the gap between gen y and our elders. Gen-y will have to take charge of this, it's their awful, inherited future, but we HAVE to help them. I'm rethinking absolutely everything.