up and down

November 3rd

With the laptop in the favourite cafe. I always feel like I’m having a little holiday when I sit in this place with the huge ponciana tree sheltering the outdoor tables. The whole place half-outside really, another tree growing right up inside through the ceiling, and a resident water dragon often seen scuttling between tables or among the foliage just outside the open window next to me. Life in Mullumbimby always feels good when I come here. They play funky music ( Jack Johnson right now, Marvin Gaye), I like the look of the other customers. And it feels cosy to come here alone. 

This Saturday we have finally invited some friends over for a very belated house-warming celebration. We have been here about fifteen months now. Not long, still feels a bit not-quite-real. Still feel a bit confused about  where ‘home’ is. Melbourne, where all the oldest friends are?  Or the old Queensland  beach house, where I feel so fully myself, and so connected with the memory of  my mother and with the ocean?

Meanwhile, life is here and I’m sitting in the cafe and I am about to go off to a meeting with fellow Gestalt Therapists, a group supervision session, something I always enjoy. I’m sane and cheerful this week. Going to gym every morning. Just started a new writing course - new batch of students came on Monday morn. 

Poor old D is a bit down. Sometimes seems like we have a seesaw relationship.  He lies on his bed in the middle of the afternoon. Drinks red wine in the evening, then regrets it the next day.  I think he needs a project. In fact he is about to embark on building a pergola, so that will probably cheer him up. 

The other day at M’s gallery opening, someone - an acquaintance-  asked D how he was, and D said “Oh you know, up and down” which I thought was an absolutely fair enough response. But the person who’d asked him looked nonplussed. I guess he expected the formulaic ‘Good thanks mate’.

Are we not all ‘up and down’ at least to some extent? I certainly am. Some of us have bigger ups and downs/ mood swings than others. But aren’t we are all ( to state the obvious)  somewhere on the continuum bipolar-wise ?  To have no moods or emotions would be like having no weather - unimaginable...

                            Anyway. Talking of mood-swings, both personal  and macro, I am still reflecting on Melbourne After The Rain. The gardens bursting with life and colour ; and the amazing greenery in Central Victoria. At G&B’s place near Castlemaine the transformation was utterly miraculous. 

                           In the fifteen years I’ve been visiting them there, there has been pretty much a perpetual drought. Constant fear of bushfires. It’s a               dry climate anyway and most of the topsoil is long-gone, the earth ravaged by the Gold Rush of the 1850’s. It’s a land of searing summer heat, biting winter cold, a landscape of gravelly greys and browns.

Now, it is a different place. The dam, usually half empty, with  brown muddy water is now a glorious shining blue lake. The stony ground - how can this be? - is suddenly carpeted in green grass. And there is a stream, tinkling through what now feels like a meadow. There are wildflowers  - purple, yellow, white, red - popping up in the forest where they must have been waiting dormant for so long. B and I lie on our backs on the soft grass and marvel at all of this. The power of water. Yes, she answers to my question, it does feel like everyone’s moods have changed too. The coming of the rain has lifted peoples spirits, softened their emotions.