Undoing.

What if our undoing, leads to our becoming? - Terry Tempest Williams

Gosh you'd think after 80 days in a row of writing I'd feel confident that I had something to say- but that friends, has not been the case. I've just moved to the south coast of NSW, in a tiny (and I do mean tiny) cabin in the bush. And the undoing is real. I've chosen to return to the birth land, with personal hesitations about 'coming back' being a reflection of 'moving backwards' whilst knowing that 'coming back' is a decision towards something new. How is it going to feel to carve out a sense of autonomy in adulthood in a place that I have only lived as a child? How can I gift what I've learnt out in the world to enrich the region that gave me such a strong grounding? How many pictures is too many pictures to take of the quite frankly ridiculous surroundings I've landed in? -------------------------------------- Life in the city hums. There is sound and light and movement in full technicolor at every turn and I feel hesitant to say that here would seem completely empty in comparison. Of course, here is overflowing with abundance, so what's this weird illusive wobbly yuck feeling I have? My body feels like a rug that has been coiled up in a warehouse somewhere. Almost like someone has pulled me off the rack, put one foot on the end and kicked the rest down a long hallway. Now I'm exposed. The space I'm taking up is small in the vastness, my chateau de petite. I'll set the scene. Each night the land recoils and curls up in darkness and becomes contained to the light of my bedside lamp. Then, around 6:30 the dirt, grass, trees, water and stones stretch out in preparation, much like we used to when we were young and would reach up to the ceiling yawning before school. Dawn ritual. The unfolding of the land sounds crisp and crunchy as the frost melts away from the bark and the sun leans in, flowers unveiling. But I feel strange, it's almost too quiet and I realise that my housemate isn't in the next room ready to get coffee and play jazz standards for us on her speakers.

I'm still waiting for my adrenal system to relax. If I'm the rug that's just been unfurled then a deluge of dust is hovering in the air above it and is yet to fall. I don't really know how to enjoy being here. The last two days have been like some sort of 4D concert of the music I listen to when I go to sleep (heavy but slow rain drops on a tin panel in a forest, very specific) and I have no concept of how I earned/deserved/created it. One thing the last year has brought up is how comfortable I am with being solo, and additionally what it will mean to continue that sense of responsibly to self when in new friendship or relationship. So let's talk about it. Pandemic solo. Bush solo. Internally solo. Living in the middle of the city surrounded by noise and people solo. In so many ways I feel like a child who wants to turn to her mother and say 'mummmm I'm borrreeeddd' but she's busy working and I have to entertain myself. Today, the antidote was making hummus from scratch, vacuum packing the clothes I won't be wearing here and going for a walk. Tomorrow, who knows...(cue full time job). As an only child though, I like to think that I'm not too bad at entertaining myself and not relying on someone else to show up with a game and musical accompaniment. But there is also this deep, sacred isolation that great poets and writers talk about; the one we're all meant to want to find. Returning to the self. A type of remembering in discovery. It all seems very vague and illusive to me, the only thing I can remember to do for myself is drink water (and even that evades me at times.) So instead of this grand cosmic past life resurrection in solitude, I'm going to just be in the memory & imagination state. Living with memory of what has been, and the rest is whatever I can imagine it to become. Imagination in future, relationship, career, adventure and even...*self*. We'll see how long that lasts, it will probably be one day of practicing being more present and the rest of the week will be dwelling on embarrassing life moments and questionable choices along the way.

Living without being seen is quite confronting because the performance of living with and around others is a full time job that we don't even realise we're participating in. But here, I'm 'back stage' and fully human. The red bumps on the back of my arms, the soft of my stomach, the pale skin on my freckled cheeks and the dialogue inside my head, existing unseen. And I think that's a lot of why the lockdowns have been so strange and difficult for us because some of the best parts of life involve being seen. Melbourne is now on day 210 (non-concurrent) of stay at home orders, and as with many people around the globe the essential nature of community, socialising and physical touch has reduced from an ocean to a drip and we're trying our best to keep it flowing. Of course there are groups coming together to uplift and inspire, and organisations working tirelessly to ensure the wellbeing of the masses, they have gone above and beyond. But it's still shit. You're allowed to feel thankful for what you have and grieve for what you've lost. This is your undoing, your unravelling, and that can be simultaneously messy and brilliant. Think of a ribbon unfurling before a young gymnast gets ready to perform. Open yourself up to what you can imagine for your future from the undoing, and how it will inform your becoming. How can this time 'alone' make you a better version of yourself when you're in relationship with others?

I'm so tired. Being completely honest sometimes I wake up and for those first 4 minutes I exist in a world in which I could go to Teta Mona on Lygon street and have a feast with my girls. I exist in a world where I can book a ticket and fly to Canada tomorrow to visit my friend and her son, and I exist whole heartedly in a world where I don't have to think about whether having kids in the current climate is a fair decision to make. But this is our undoing, and the thousands and thousands of tiny decisions we make at each metronome beat of our day, lead us towards our becoming. I hope you're all doing okay, and managing to keep your head above the tidal wave flooding in and around us (in whatever shape that takes for you). Don't give up hope, now is the time for expansive imagination. M x

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.

Ceremony [ ser-uh-moh-nee ] A unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. Aka, life.