The Circle

I came to Australia in 1981 from a tiny little hamlet in the UK. My brown suitcase and a fluffy dog called Peanuts were my transportable bedroom for a while until my parents eventually found a nice enough suburban house to settle down in. Our Aussie home grew roots over time until 30 years later, here I am still half a world away from my origins, and still feeling the pull of homelands gravity.

I love living in Australia. I've grown up with horses, beaches and a healthy outdoor life and I am an independent adult living an independent life which I couldn't afford to do if I was back in the UK, I'm sure my history would have a completely different set of books to the library if I had grown up there. But I'm not one to entertain what-if's so I just get on with living where my feet are.

As a student of philosophy, I try to find the poetry in archtecture. The architecture of man is straight lines and angles, intended to fit in spaces with as little wasted space as humanly possible - space is money of course. The architecture of nature, is roundness. Nature doesn't put a dollar sign on itself, it puts itself first. A tree will grow around a rock, a rock will emerge from a million years of uplift and metamorphosis within it's bed. An animal will be born, it will eat, reproduce and die, it's atoms (round) will be put to use for the next round of marvellous creation.

The world is round, time is round. Everything in life goes in a spiralistic direction, constantly renewing but never quite a distinguishing itself as a solitary moment of existence.

My circumstances have me sitting here in my home office, typing away on my computer, thinking about the massive distance between my gran and a kiss for her. The only distance that prevents this connection, is measurable space. Take away the relative space of man-made distance and time becomes eternal, therefore non-existent (or measurable). Therefore, in a space-less existence my kiss is firmly planted on my gran's cheek already.

Ok, so I've probably lost most of you reading this already too so I'll get back into the realm of our everyday sliced bread kinda' life. The main thing I wanted to write, is because our world is round, every step I take away from my gran's front door is actually one step closer to me walking back in. Every mile you drive/fly/paddle from your most favourite person/dog/cat is really, one marvellous mile back!

After all, circle's are made with a 'whole' in the middle :)

Why not start with an epiphamy?

The last time I had an epiphamy, I was feverish with either B grade celebrity pig flu or the common flu just stealing some paparazzi time. I was staying in a little beach house down the coast and I was there for some thinking time, I needed some space from a pile of problems. But instead of sorting out some tough life issues, I was snorting out through boxes of Kleenex tissues. I wanted to spend time in quiet solitude and there's nothing like a sore throat to make you speechless.

Anyway, there I was trying to evoke a sense of higher purpose, get my thoughts straightened from a higher source. For the first three days I just moped about, looking closer down at my naval than up at the light. Maan, why do I always end up in the wrong relationships with people who start off telling you how nice they are, and then end up telling you how nice they were?

Aaargh, it's all crap. Potential friends should apply with their insurance rating stamped to their forehead - "Yes, she had 6 crap relationships in one year." I'd be looking for the one with "20 years no claim bonus", or the one with "full, comprehensive (with added fire and theft cover)". That would've taken care of the ex-friend who set fire to my fringe back in the 80's when hairspray was with fruit & vegies in the food pyramid.

Well back to my epiphamy. On my last night at the holiday house, I went for a walk along the beach under a setting sun which I might add, was one of the most glorious sunsets I have witnessed for a long time. My dog was busy scampering about in the grassy dunes and I stopped walking and just stood still, looking out far to sea. The sky was mesmorising in it's rainbows of colour and biblical cloud scapes, the subduing sunlight caught every possible corner of the sky and water creating even more sublime textures and depth. I stood there just accepting and absorbing the sunset with all my five senses. It felt good.

All of a sudden I just felt like running, so I ran. Dog's being dog's, Tig's ran too. We both just ran. And ran, and ran some more. The sinking sand grabbed at my feet trying to slow me down, and the wind hit hard against my body, but I ran further. My flu made me tired and I my sore throat burned dry from the dry oxygen, but I kept running. Tig ran faster, so I ran faster to keep up. We ran for a good kilometre until I finally had to stop from utter exhaustion. I collapsed into a sand hill, grasping at air with my lungs and laughing at my dog who was laughing at me. I looked back at the sunset, it was gone.

Somethings go.

I realised then that instead of just passively watching the beauty of time, I had become part of time. I had run through a sunset. I was part of a tiny moment that seperates day from night, light from dark, growth from slumber. My silly little life had become entwined with the certainty of the universe. As the sun sets every day whether we see it or not, I too had to move on. I then let my last few dodgy months go down with that sunset and I decided to just begin another day when I woke up tomorrow. I couldn't control or predict the weather but at least I needed to be there to either collect the rainwater or dry my washing in the sun.

Epiphamy - maybe. Common sense - definitely.