Kingsukuroi

Kintsuki, or kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics, using gold. What a beautiful idea. What very lovely results. The technique is an obvious and wonderful analogy for the repair of broken people, or people with broken hearts or minds. The message is clear.

 

If we are handled (or handle ourselves) with enough loving care and good intention, we can be put back together again, for sure. Yes, it will be still evident where the cracks were, but those mended cracks can be build ever so wonderfully into our being and can, in fact, make us more beautiful than before. To a degree, it is partly in the eye of the beholder. To some, perfect and pristine is the only acceptable state of being, but to many others, well worn and lovingly repaired can make hearts and minds resonate and sing.

 

The trick is to do a gorgeous repair job. I had a pair of jeans once, a long time ago. They were old, faded, and much mended. I relished each new crack and tear because it gave me another opportunity to patch those jeans of many colours. I used to sew a lot, so I had plenty of fabric around. Each patch had a story to tell .... when it was added, who I was with, and what garment which I had sewed did the fabric of the patch come from? The breakage and the mending became not just the story, but also the glory of those jeans. How I adored them! I loved wearing them with tops I had made that had matching patches on the jeans. Those jeans were really something.

 

I do love old. I do love well worn. I don't love broken. I must become a mender of souls, a repairer of hearts, a fixer of minds. Especially my own. What I realise now is there is no shame in being repaired, the only shame is in letting something lie broken that could be made whole, in a new way, even more wondrous and desirable than the old.

 

 

 

 

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I’m practicing house avoidance

It’s something I do when home/domestics get out of control.  I guess it doesn’t really help anything much.  The right thing to do would be to get in there, sleeves rolled up, and tackle the things that are bothering me.

Trouble is, there’s so many things bothering me it all feels a bit overwhelming and I don’t know where to start, and some of the things that are bothering me are (or feel) out of my control.

Maybe I should try listing my top ten issues with the house and then either fix them myself or try to figure out a way to work through them.

1. the carpet
2. the clutter
3. the cockroaches
4. mess
5. darkness/dullness
6. layout
7. more mess
8. more clutter
9. carpet
10. bed on floor situation

Well - that’s kind of it.  Some things got listed twice.  That’s because they feel SO big that when I run my eyes mentally around the house, I keep bumping in to them wherever I go.  I think I will have to break the mess and clutter into definable areas that might be able tow work as bite sized chunks and then just make a schedule and figure out how and when I’m going to tackle each thing or area.

I’m going to have to get a huge amount of toxic (yes, it really really bothers me but I don’t know what else to do) cockroach spray and spray extensively as I go.  The house has developed a really serious cockroach plague and it’s totally depressing and off-putting.

So - where do I begin?

Let’s take item number one - the carpet.  I do absolutely, completely and vehemently HATE IT.  It’s one of those things I feel very little control over.  I’ve lived with it for a couple of years now.  I accepted living with it in the outset because I thought it was something we would change.  We haven’t and I’ve had a hate affair with it pretty much every day, for the entire time we’ve lived at the house.  It’s a total deal breaker for me.

What can I do about the carpet right now?  I can vacuum it and I can get someone out to give me a quote to do a full professional clean of it and subsequent to that, perhaps I can re-open the discussion with my partner about the potential for taking (at least some of) it out, and replacing it with something more live-able and less depressing.  

That’s three distinct phases that need to be seen as separate actions.

CARPET ACTIONS:

1. vacuum
2. get professional clean quote
3. discuss removal

OK.  Next problem, clutter.  Bad enough to make the list twice, so lets divide it into zones.  There are in fact more than two zones.  We have:  ENTRY LEVEL CLUTTER, LOWER DECK CLUTTER AND UPSTAIRS CLUTTER.  I’m not even going to go there with the flat - I just don’t look or function in there, I don’t see it as a place I have any control over or investment in.  I’m going to completely ignore the lower deck for the time being too - it’s just too much.  So - much focuses are going to be simply main house upstairs clutter and main house downstairs clutter.  What can I do about these things?

For this, I may need to enlist the help of both the FLY Lady and my partner.  The FLY Lady has some serious decluttering programs, which I think you can sign up for and get motivational emails regarding.  That might help.

One of my biggest problems with the clutter at the house is that I own relatively little of the items that fill it.  What we are ever going to do with many of these things and what earthly purpose they serve is a bit beyond me, but they are not my possessions to get rid of.  That makes it difficult.

Clutter steps:

1. sign up/commit to FLY Lady decluttering program
2. enlist help of partner and commitment from him to declutter also
3. carry out serious cull of own possessions
4. fumigate all items during each step of the process
5. set some boxes aside ready to move to new home
6. MINIMISE MINIMISE MINIMISE MINIMISE !!!!!!!

That’s the top two problems.  Dealing with them should to some degree help with the cockroach issues anyway - but I think the plague is bad enough it needs to also be tackled in it’s own right.

So - for the cockroaches, we need to: 

1. engage a professional pest controller
2. work systematically through each nook and cranny of the house, removing everything and spraying, before returning anything to that zone
3. start in the worst cockroach infested areas and work through slowly from those to other areas of the house.  Top problem zones are:
1. kitchen
2. bathroom
3. laundry
4. lounge room

Decluttering and cockroach control actions which can be taken by us should be able to go pretty much hand in hand.  It’s a public holiday today so getting a pest controller isn’t going to be a today thing.

We had been going to wait until we had at least partially moved out before getting a professional, but I think it’s gone a bit beyond the pale and we kind of need them now.

Next item: MESS

Yes, mess as separate to clutter.  We have both.  What I guess I should try to do is identify specific mess areas that really get me down and tackle them in order of depressingness.

Top mess areas to tackle in order:

1. Single armchair under window
2. glass table next to single armchair under window
3. front door entry area
4. long table in workroom outside laundry
5. laundry
6. main bedroom

That’s enough messes to think about and list for today.  There is one area of the house that really haunts me as somewhere I try not to think about or look.  It’s probably more clutter than mess.  I know I don’t like it and that it’s a whole black hole full of stuff we won’t have room for at the new place.  It’s the storage hole behind the toilet in the main bathroom.  I hate that area.  I try to only open the door quickly and slam it shut again without looking.  I’ll have to gather up the courage to deal with it at some stage.

In fact - you know what - that’s enough of EVERYTHING to think about for today.  It’s a four day weekend and then I have to be back on deck at work and it’s really crazy busy there at the moment.  If I list anything else, I will be totally overwhelmed.

I’ve got some starting points.

I think it’s first stop the supermarket, for some cockroach sprays and baits.

A quarter of an hour to home

I'm dying to get off the train and go to the loo. Stupid, but work is so busy I ran out the door needing to go and didn't get a chance between one train and the next and this train is too crowded to contemplate getting up and fighting my way through.

 

What a joke. I just don't have moments in my days, even for my most personal of needs at the moment. I guess sometimes work is like that. Not pleasant though. How long can it possibly be sustainable for?

 

To guess it's complicated by the fact that my son's father is away so I'm much less willing to miss a train that will delay my arrival home by half an hour. Tomorrow I'll have to arrange for him to go to a friends, as it is, as none of us are available to be there anytime in the first hour or two after he gets home from school.

 

I suppose soon he will be old enough to go home by himself, but it doesn't feel right yet at this stage. I hate feeling like I have to compromise my parenting standards because of my work.

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Fight or Flight

I have a neighbour who has turned a bit nasty.  It's horrible.  Well, nasty is probably a bit of a stretch really.  It feels like nasty to me, at the moment ... but the truth of the matter is probably more like: stressed, upset, angry, over it.  There's been stuff going on, for over a year now, that has made living where she is living really difficult, due to a project on my side of the fence.  Her boundary is compromised and her footpath is a mess.

I've had a few goes at sorting it out and getting it deal with - but the truth of the matter is, I guess - it hasn't been enough and the whole thing has just dragged on and on.  When that happens, eventually sometimes some people explode.  Explode she did.  Good and proper.

The trouble with some people, when they explode, is that rationality just disappears.  I guess that probably goes for most people, when they explode.  So - I can't have a discussion with her, she just shouts accusations and name calls and adds more and more problems and complaints to the list.  There's not, at the moment, actually a way of sitting down calmly and figuring out what it is that I could do to make things better for her.  I wish I could.

I really dislike dissent and anger.  So much so that my whole fight/flight response goes into high alert over issues like this.  After the first conversation with her I had already decided that I didn't want to live there anymore at all and that I would just put the place on the market.  I've been looking at Real Estate websites, trying to work out how much I might be able to get for my house, and then looking to see what kind of a place I might be able to afford to buy.  I actually saw a place not too far from my current place that looks really great!

A lot of money and effort to spend rather than dealing with a neighbourhood dispute though.

I hope I stop feeling like that soon.  I really do.  I hope she calms down.  I hope we can find a solution that is going to work for her and make her feel like her issues have been addressed.

I have this horrible feeling that she spent such a long time getting to angry that now that she is there, she's decided she's damned well going to stay there.

*sigh*

Tracking Again

I've gotten back into transcribing my blog posts & journal entries into my "book".  I like it - but at the same time it's a quite confronting project.

Reading over the places that I've been, the dark holes that I fell into over the past year and more - it's not a comforting activity.  It's also quite concerning and disturbing to see how far apart my posts in here  and in my journal sometimes have been from my more "public" blog - where I own my own identity, name, face, location ....

It's scary sometimes, when we realise just how much we conceal - even from ourselves!

Even though it's scary, somehow, I've come to think that part of the healing process is in bringing the worlds together.  The very internal, introspective and dark world of a blog that has been intentionally set up to track depression and longed for recovery.  The day to day drudge world of a journal, kept to just record whatever happens, however insignificant.  Then the blog set up to present a public face and to take baby steps as a public writer.  Combine those with the locked and safe blog where there was a defined audience, who were also revealing their own stories, and a facilitator who was leading and asking sometimes quite though provoking questions.

Worlds collide.  Watching it happen on my electronic pages as they thread and lace together is a bit weird.  It doesn't always make me feel safe or wonderful about who I am - but I feel it is a task I must do and I also feel that the result is something that I am bound to share.  No more hiding.  No more shying away from the ugly (but sometimes beautiful) truths of it all.

Other Fish to Fry

I was just writing in my personal journal. I was singing happy songs about the fact that I might be seeking alternative employment before too very long. I was noting that have:

Other fish to fry.

Other ponds to fish in, other horizons to seek.

I'm a change lover, a wanderer, a non-conformist, a gypsy soul.

I love to travel to new places, see new faces, make new acquaintances. To me, stability isn't that far off sterility. Too much of the same bland sameness makes me feel like I am stagnating and suffocating.

I need to breathe new air, I long to set sail on new seas. I want to learn new things, I ache to see with new eyes. I want to hear a different song. I am tired of this marching beat. It's time to waltz.

I don't have that much of a plan. I don't even know quite what direction I will head in when my leash is unbuckled. I think at first I might just run in ecstatic dizzy circles, like a dog let off after too long on the chain.

I'm thinking its time that I started working towards formulating my "what comes next" plan. There's lots of things I WANT to do, but I also need to address the age old basic of food on the table and a roof over our head. I'll be neither financially independent nor debt free when I make good my escape from this desert of the mind. I will have to find a way to make all of our ends meet and to keep on re-weaving the threads that hold us together.

For now, I'm thinking the two greatest things for me to have, and to hold to are trust and confidence. Trust that the right path will open before me, when the time come, and confidence in my own strength and ability to tread that path both boldly and well.

Until then, on I plod, head down, heart playing the slow and steady drum of those who drag their feet ... doing the thing that they seem doomed to do, for the simple fact of the imperative of holding the physical threads of shelter and nourishment together.

 

 

New Horizons ...

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I've lost it a bit with the book thing

So, at one stage a while back I started out on a bit of a book project.  I got really excited and started pulling together posts from this blog, another blog of mine, my journal and also from a writing project I got involved in.  For a short time, I put huge amounts of effort into collecting, collating and commenting on my various pieces of writing and working hard to getting it into some sort of chronological order.

The whole point of chronological, rather than reverse chronological (blog reading style if you discover a blog quite a while after it's inception) was that it would be make much more sense so far as tracking recovery from depression is concerned.

I must admit that it seems like I've lost it, quite badly, with the project.  I don't know - work and life took over I guess.  I got excited about food prep - HOORAY - all over again and went off on a particular food quest, amongst other things.  The world is a crazy, busy and often (to me at least) exhausting and slightly bewildering place.

For a while there, I hardly even wrote.  Not even in my journal .... let alone trolling back through older pieces of writing and getting them into some kind of order.

However - I think that the project has merit and I really really do want to get back on the wagon with it.  I'm not 100% sure how I'm going to make that happen, but I know that I have to.  Really.  It's important, on more levels than I can even begin to express or describe.

I gotta get me back on that writing wagon!