The intertidal zone

It’s not often that a person loses her health, her faith, her home, her
job, most of her friends all in one fell swoop. So when that person picks herself back up and meticulously pieces together her own life — sifting, sorting, reclaiming and building from the ground up, then finds her voice and reconstructs her story with the same objectivity and care — you can be sure she
has something immensely valuable to say.

In Rushleigh – The Wasteland Chronicle, Leigh offers hard-earned insight to
anyone who’s struggling with any aspect of their lives. (Okay, there’s
something for everyone.) From basic survival skills in the aftermath of
trauma, to finding the professional help you need, from coping with
panic and sorting through unhelpful or dangerous beliefs, to getting
your finances in order, Leigh offers her writings as a rock-steady
companion for the journey back to Life.

Leigh writes:
This site contains thoughts and suggestions to do with managing crisis
and trauma, along with my own spiritual reassessment. It includes
extensive comment about the pitfalls of New Age thinking and the
painful process I went through extracting myself from it.

Although I didn’t see it at the time, the hammer blows of fate that
shattered the old way were necessary. I now feel more true to myself
than I was before. New wellsprings do rise up – if we let them. Life
does eventually fill the empty spaces.

Nonetheless, that exceedingly difficult time was made more so by the
paucity of useful information and the gross unhelpfulness of people
whose work it was to help. Although I have been difficult to help,
much of what I needed, and didn’t get, was at a very basic level.
Having said that, there has been a small number of professionals from
whom I have had valuable attention. These and the generous friendship
of close family and friends have got me through.

Isolation is a big issue at a time of crisis, as it is when living with
enduring illness and disability. Researching this set of writings has
brought me a much expanded awareness, not only of factual information,
but also of the stories of others going through similar experiences.
I’m not as alone as I had thought.

I wish you all a safe passage.

Warm landscape.

Warm hospitality.

And here’s the generous interview posted by Tim Jones: Books in the Trees, talking with me last week about Island.

Poet Salman Masalha writes from Jerusalem on the recent exploits of ‘Israel’s pirate army’.

Zeynep dances at Sophie's wedding

I was feeling jaded and anxious about my new/old/latest/ongoing project. It was all too much. I couldn’t even think about it. Then I teed up a meeting with Beverly, but felt so despondent I almost cancelled. Not quite, however. She asked me questions, got me to peel back the layers of diffidence, helped me uncover the original impulse and the joy and certainty attached to that. Her eyes fired, her face and voice came alive — she made of herself a kind of mirror, giving my sense of purpose and determination back to me.

I found myself ready to take the next step.

What a gift.

NASA photo

The ‘elusive’ Jellyfish Nebula, 5,000 light years away.

Closer at hand, Claire’s Antarctic Medusa.

Photo by Alex Huber

I think these were my great aunts’ undergarments, hand-made, of course, with all their intricate, undisplayed detail, which I’ve lugged about for years in an old cotton flour bag, along with a couple of well-cured ferret skins and skeins of old lace. I freshened them up in Nappysan and sunshine, then Alex appropriated them for the delightful blog she shares with her cousin: you could totally be french. If you wear clothes, you’ll want to check it out.

I was moved when my mother wrote after reading Island that a couple of the characters reminded her strongly of my two grandmothers “— strong, practical, optimistic  (especially after a little time alone with their feelings). And Liesel too could have been Granny Grace carrying on until the tasks were all done during the 1918 influenza epidemic” (at Christchurch Hospital where she also met my grandfather recovering from injuries sustained in the Somme).

I’d had neither in mind while writing but accept that it’s likely they would find expression through me. The photo is of ‘Bunny’, my father’s mother, Ellen Preston, in command of the coal range at their station Glen Shee in the Maniototo, probably in the 1930s or 40s.

It’s been the oddest time of late. And yet not entirely unexpectedly odd. Collectively, we on Earth have brought ourselves to a strange and delicate state. I’ve been dealing with upswells of anxiety and I mention this because I suspect I’m not alone in it. While I try to examine myself for local causes, I wonder if I’m not also ‘catching the wave’ of our shared uncertainty: what is dying, and what will be born?

I’ve noticed that this particular malaise responds better to rich interchange than to prolonged introspection. And yesterday, my antidote: these floating vessels, boats beneath the ice. Neither full nor empty, they are held, turned, lifted, lowered, and drifted through veils of light and dark — utterly responsive to the element in which they find themselves.

Claire Beynon: Descend, Ascend — oil and liquin on paper

Claire Beynon and Kate Alterio‘s collaborative art and jewelery exhibition, ALCHEMY, runs for another week at The Artist’s Room here in Dunedin. Recalling the excited buzz of opening day, I was grateful to find myself alone this time. Within the work itself, many portals invite entry, as do the tiny painted brooch- and pendant-scapes inside each of which a world awaits. Spokes, shafts or upwellings of light draw the eye to previously unobserved vistas; pairs or collections of figures entice the viewer to join their quiet talks and explorations…

… and the boats: today in silent, calming rise and fall, the boats and I are breathing.

Photo by Claire Beynon

Shot from behind: I found this dress by cacherel in Ushuaia of all places. Elena talked me into it. With the pashmina from Yaks’n'Yetis, I was all set for Sophie and Ryan’s wedding.

For those of us writers slow to take a square look at the need for DIY book promotion — which can feel squeamishly like self-promotion — I reckon we might just have to get over ourselves and learn to play with the new tools. As will publishers. Mixing it up. Blurring the boundaries. Being generous. Author and social media adept Gretchen Rubin outlines tips for authors on the helpful US digitalbookworld site.

No doubt we’ll stumble along the way, get it wrong and embarrass ourselves or offend others now and then. But that’s not usually fatal.

I wished I had the camera last night: just when we think the meal well and truly over, the waiter comes out flourishing a fish to set on the lazy susan — entire, ‘crispy’, teeth bared, fins awry, standing on its plate, to all appearances freshly electrocuted.

I wished I had it this morning at St Clair: a hundred teenaged schoolgirls set off along the promenade, the front-runners prancing, the last four all loosened hair and artful pallor, nonchalantly strolling; in the carpark, a lone boy-surfer strips off, surrounded by another hundred girls; three paces away the Eventide Resthome van with residents in situ, doors hung open, a fish-crate upturned beside it — makeshift table for the preparation of tea: mugs, thermoses, a jar of milk. Raymond and I might have photographed ourselves, too: walking beside blue-jade breakers, 28 years married today.

I wished I had the camera last night to photograph the beloved friends and well-wishers who helped launch Island out into the reading world. And to capture Emma saying very touching things about it, which, I’ve just been alerted, appear on Claire’s blog Icelines here.

Thank you, Emma and Claire!