MANDALAS AND THE JOY OF THINKING
This week the air feels slightly colder than a week ago. The air carries a gentle scent which is reminiscent of the smell of the plastic ice box in the freezer. It reminds me how much I enjoy inhaling the scent of ice-cream freezers in the supermarket, and also that I haven’t done that for quite some time.
Alt text says this week’s photo is: a stuffed animal in a room with many circular ornaments. I say it is Ronnie arriving at Yarndale and being delighted by the ceiling displays of colourful mandalas.
There was something magical about the way the display made its own sky as we stood underneath it, and a beauty in the patterns cast in the shadows they created on the walls.
I had been thinking about thoughts and self-talk before I arrived, and as I stood underneath this new sky and gazed upwards I felt a connection between the vast number of different circles and how thoughts spin and dance in my head.
For me particular jobs fit in best at designated times of day. If you’re a regular reader of this blog you will, for example, know that I like cleaning the windows in my pyjamas. (It gets the job done before the day has started, and the inevitable splashing of water doesn’t matter.)
I also like emptying the compost bin before I have a shower, but on Friday I forgot to do it first thing. To encourage myself to get on and do it after I was dressed I told myself that future me, returning from a weekend away, would be very glad of a clean compost bin. I laughed at both my need for self-encouragement and the fact that I knew this would work. And, if I hadn’t got on and done it then, I might have missed the real joy of the job…the blue sky, the freshness of the air and two blue tits finding plenty to interest them on the apple tree.
I love the way blue tits seem to dance as they fly. An admirable lightness and joy radiates from them. I am also glad our garden gives them some of what they need. They were finding something tasty on the smaller branches of the apple tree and we too had feasted from the tree earlier in the week when we harvested a good first crop of apples. It feels good to eat the fruit so fresh and not to write ‘apples’ on the shopping list for a few weeks. Our neighbour also invites us to visit his garden and share his apples which makes us super lucky.
So this week a compost bin visit and a yarn show have woven together so that I think about self-talk as colourful mandalas of thoughts dancing and interacting in my head. Here’s to colours and positivity and joy.
And as I finish writing this blog and wonder which poem to include this one from Welcome to the Museum of a Life comes to mind:
MY HYBRID HEART
I put my fist slightly off centre on my chest
draw round it, with red marker pen,
make a Valentine’s heart.
It needs to be bolder.
I outline it again
with black.
I recall the pages of my old Gray’s Anatomy;
add in a fat aorta
ventricles, atria
forget where the vena cava goes.
I leave it out.
press lightly to feather in the valves
laugh when they look like ghosts.
If I still had the book
I’d check what I’d missed
but I am happy
with the hybrid I’ve created.
Once, I had an echocardiogram,
its peaks perfect,
despite the fact it felt as if you’d tied
rough brown string round my heart
and pulled it tight.
Connected to that machine
I tried not to think of you
didn’t want to feel adrenalin daring me
to breathe fast.
What would you say if you could see me now?
Call me crazy?
Ask me if I had nothing better to do?
I look in the mirror
meet the lines around my eyes
with a flirtatious smile.
This could be my first tattoo.
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