Magnolia blooming in a dead month July 20, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in Matters Yellow.add a comment
Is July the month of death?
I always thought so. I expect because my mother, favoured aunt and grandpa all died in July. Perhaps it’s because the cold chills me to the bone. It just feels like a dead month.
Magnolia
But during this month, the most magnificent blooms come into their own. The Magnolia - with their sensuous broad white petals somehow emerging from tightly wrapped spiral shells. Some remain bud-like on the gnarled branches, tightly enlosed and secretive for as long as they can. But invariably, as the month grows older, they too start to change, they can’t resist.
They open bit by bit. Some more eager than others appear almost wanton. Opening wider and wider, leaning backwards in complete surrender, curling back of themselves. It’s a daring move. So daring, the cold couldn’t get to them even if it wanted to. for they’re beyond caring. They’ve gone to that stage just before death with such abandon I am ashamed to watch. Ashamed, that is, because I can’t be that open.
Gabby told me a story once about the birth of her third child, who was born in the month of July. When she was born there was no bed in the hospital other than one that lay at the end of the ward for mothers of still-born babies. And so, on that morning when the nurses brought her clean, healthy, fair, beautiful and serene baby for her first feeding, they did so through a valley of death.
She was born on our grandfather’s anniversary. And christened Phoebe. Gabby chose the name for a number of personal reasons, only to find out some time later, that same name had been used by our grandfather, as a term of endearment our mother when she was a child. They might have been dead but I’m starting to think they were there in spirit- endorsing the name and celebrating new life.
My mother loved magnolias. We had one blooming in the garden of our family home. I’ve painted the magnolia for years, trying to recapture the memory associated with it, marvelling at its seductive beauty and calm strength. It blooms for such a short time, the study and execution is intense. I have yet to really capture one the way I would wish. Perhaps because it represents so much of what is transient.
I painted them when Bloke was sick, using gold-leaf and paint on paper I tried to capture that fragile passing, trying to vainly lock it safely in beaten metal. I’ve painted them on 6 panels - human height, as if in a garden with branches that spanned the width of a wall. But they don’t come close to the beauty of the tree in our front garden and the one I passed this morning.
So in a month or so, when they’re gone, I’ll still look for them. I’ll yearn for them in wonder at that fleeting splendour and its power to bring me undone. Every July when the cold chills me to the bone I’ll miss them. Just like I miss all that have died. And I’ll remember how splendidly open they were in the moment before their passing. Fragile in a world of beating metal and winter winds.
Counting to 50 July 12, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in Matters Blue.Tags: love, myth, narrative therapy
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This afternoon I took tea at the Queen Vic with my gorgeous gal-pal-paola. What a well spent afternoon.
Paola is a gifted film maker, writer and human being. She is also - and I’m sure she’d concur- a little on the looney side; mind you no closer to or farther from madness than me. A delightful divine madness in pursuit of pure spirit, less ego, forgiveness, truth, patience, authenticity and lasting love. A quest to last a life time.
I asked to meet her because I am nutting out an idea of interviewing some people for a book. It was a fruitful meeting where she helped me understand the logistics of delivering and shaping a potentially great idea. In other words, she kept it real.
She’s in love - which provides an inspiring and delightful mind-set. All possibilities are welcome, all dreams are possible, all reality is sweeter, finer and all feelings are transcended. Of course one also resides in a state of suspended horny-ness. I wish her much of this state, much lasting love and a strengthening belief in her self as a result of the alchemy.
The stories we tell ourselves about the lives we lead can provide a rich vein of wisdom and analysis. They become heightened with seminal moments such as falling in love. What a great way to find out more about each other - “Tell me the story of your life”.
But Is that story of that life of interest to others? Is all of it, or part of it more interesting. Does it make the “big” lessons more understandable because of the narrative? 
There’s plenty of research that such a process provides insights into thematic “clusters”, trends, blocks, oversight, obsessions and the great “unsaid” of our lives. How splendid to gather the stories of others. And is it possible to then re-tell them and keep it honest. Don’t we filter? Dont we assume? Don’t we cloud it with presumptions of what would be interesting to others - clinical analysis of someones disclosure.
This was the challenge I set my darling Paola - and she came up with some very profound insights - I expect because she’s living her life - in line with the “narrative arc”. There is the right amount of drama, challenge, quest, faith, longing and inspiration.
How hard is it to change? July 7, 2008
Posted by Liz Mead in Matters Yellow.Tags: change, changing jobs, personal transformation.
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I had lunch with my aunty yesterday and showed her the pictures of my recent trip overseas.
She was particularly enamoured of one where a boat is pointing outwards to the horizon, not yet launched, still in harbour waiting and safe. She thought I should use it on my blog - so here it is.
My aunt is in her seventies and is a fiercely loyal woman, loyal to family and to her faith and to her memories. Loyalty is a fabulous quality to have and if you don’t “get” it at birth it’s hard to acquire along the way.
These days, there’s always something to push our buttons, convince us to change brands and form new attachments. I envy her that gift of the spirit, to stick with what she knows and to love it in all its “ordinariness” and to hang on, sometimes in the face of fierce persuasion, to the direction she set and the choices she’s made. She’s a nun - so she knows all about that.
One of the hardest things in coming home after an expansive trip is to accept that your “ordinary” life, the one you left behind, is still there waiting for you. On first impressions, it doesn’t seem to have changed at all.
Maybe the date, maybe the temperature, maybe even the hair colour of your gal pals changes, but as for deep and sustainable change (to the way people think, behave, live, and choose) not a change at all. Same playing field - just a different ball game.
But what if you want to change? How to do it? I thought the world would do it first. Isn’t that the way things work? Isn’t that why I went away. I know from experience there’s no shortage of bad change that happens ‘out there’. Let’s face it, shit happens and your world goes arse up more often than not. So why can’t it change when you want it to (as opposed to when you didn’t want it to)?
Clearly for things to change in my life- it’s up to me. It’s up to me to re-enter the stratosphere with the firm commitment to move away from the things I didn’t miss, and move towards the things I did miss when I was away. Move towards good friends, and away from boring work. Move towards healthy lifestyle and away from too much booze. Move towards creative expansion and away from fear and small mindedness.
Of course I should expand into new arenas, after all that’s what growth is all about. And of course I should embrace the dying-off of the old. Let it go. Don’t try to put on the top you’ve outgrown, or sit in the chair that’s broken, renovate! move up and out. But I’m afraid.
Despite the fear, I’m changing from the outside in. I’ve started with the way I work and live. I want less contact hours with a traditional way of working and more hours of a creative pursuit. I want to write more and paint more. I want to carve out work that matters to me, create messages that resonate with me. I want to meet more people and talk to them to make sense of my own journey and the world we live in, and what it means to be human, and loyal.
But now that it’s just up to me - I’m stuffed! I’m not afraid to admit I need help. I need mentors. Hell I need to re-enter the world with a midwife!
Two very good friends of mine, who have midwifed my last big life change (ie meeting blokey all those years ago) are about to relocate to Canada for 5 months. And I’ll miss them. I was going to stay with them whilst I renovated at home, and I was going to lean on them, learn from them all about living well and living boldly. But they were so bold they went off on another adventure.
So I have to learn all about being bold for myself here in home harbours. So there you have it - alone again. Admittedly I have an expanded view of the horizon and admittedly my personal world did change from outside after all - the perennial question is, as it always will be, am I up to dealing with the consequences?
