Even though I only work two days a week at a university, the last two weeks seem to have caused brain overload. I am juggling a few different things right now with two friends very ill with dementia, helping with the rat catching programme at Hobsonville Point, running the book club, working casually but more often at the info centre, collecting for the Aunties , writing a monthly article for The Westerly and being MC for the New Horizons for Women-Hine Kahukura ceremony last Saturday.
I am not complaining, I like my busy life but I find myself getting brain overload so I was lucky enough to have a couple of days in Waipu. I spent two great days feeding ducks, admiring gardens and new planting, listening for kiwi at night, walking in brisk conditions, petting two dogs, eating great food cooked by the hostess with the mostest, overdoing wine and chocolates, sitting by a roaring fire and generally doing nothing much. In a ten minute window of blustery rain, I picked daffodils. It is so satisfying picking them in a beautiful wee glade on the farm, the crisp stems snapping and the electric fence zapping…
Since returning home I have been enjoying Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travelling. He takes one chapter to explain Wordsworth’s love of nature and its curative powers. He says, “The poet proposed that Nature, which he took to comprise, among other elements, birds, streams, daffodils and sheep, was an indispensable corrective to the psychological damage inflicted by life in the city.” I think he is onto something right there.
In the earlier section of the book he also curbed my romanticising of another holiday in France by reminding me of something I have always known but which I carefully lock away in the back of my mind and forget about a month after I have been anywhere. He was discussing a visit to a particularly idyllic beach resort in the Carribean.
A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making its first appearance: that I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.
I am trying to be more Wordsworth-like and notice the small joys around me. I am always enamoured by poppies at this time of year. I love the way their furry “testicles” split open to reveal the gorgeous papery flower. I get a seriously good dose of pleasure from that small Spring phenomenon. I can’t say truthfully though, that I have stopped romanticising about another holiday in France
I have had this post sitting around a while as I was having so much trouble loading images but it may be fixed!
Happy October, it’s about now we start saying to one another, “Good grief, it’s nearly Christmas!!” belatedly, FG
Fluffy George 