Sunday, April 11, 2010

Missing you


Signs of life and death proliferate, and those I hold dear are far away.

Spirited are the sugar snap pea seeds I planted a week ago, delicately but robustly pushing their way free of the soil and straw in the raised garden bed, their vulnerable white stems supporting tiny leaves which seem to tenuously defy the challenging dark clouds racing across the eastern sky. Meanwhile, rotting avocadoes, brown and cracked like soil that has endured decades of drought, are scattered randomly throughout the decaying leaf matter under the mossy gnarled trunk that supported their nurturance.

In a parallel universe, my best friend Sal sits in discomfort in her home across the Arafura sea waiting anxiously for news on the state of health of her beloved who has returned to Australia for tests. Pia weeps through our skype connection, floundering through the depression that has plagued her since her difficult transition back to the first world after the profound experience of community development work in India. Listening to their fears and uncertainties I feel a moon away from the companionship I so yearn to provide. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t take flight and land on the door of these dilemmas as my car has a potential cracked head and awaits its own diagnosis. What an interesting symbolic reminder of my need to stay put, to extend the hand of empathy and comfort from my new home on the Burringbar range and practise, with grace and humility, the traditions that cultivate the strength required to be a rock.

This melancholic moment.

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