We often end the year feeling a short fall or feeling chuffed with how we did, we invariably feel hungover.

 I figured instead of making some new random wish I’d do a bit of an audit to determine any personal growth achieved and any outstanding. If i did well on the investment I’d play it forward -if not I’d have the bones of a new game plan. An investment strategy for 2010.

 Here we go..

• i paid off my debts (a plus)
• i finished the renovations (now what do I do?)
• i began to desire (sigh)
• i shut one door even though Icouldn’t see the nextone open (now what do i do?)
• i started and dropped local theatre membership (what was i thinking?)
• i started and finished psychological and career counselling sessions (and i’ve gotta tell you there are some nutters and some genius operators out there)
• i learnt 8 good truths about myself (now what do I do?)
• i began the year with my elder sister and finished it with my twin – separated by an ocean (a blissful plus)
• i celebrated the birth of two darling babies to two dear friends (a plus)
• i painted 8 paintings (still arguing over the merit)
• i tweeted countless times (still think tweeting is silly)
• i blogged somewhat less (and was richer for the silence)
• i failed to tell some people i loved them (unforgivable)
• i realised what a great mother figure my aunt was (a plus)
• i interviewed dozens of people for 10 minutes and set up a new blog (a plus)
• i  discovered Hafez (a necessity)
• i ceased the incessant chatter to bloke (he was richer for the silence)
• i cemented my personal style (oh sure)
• i drank too much wine (but then promptly drank some more so that bottom line is blotto)
• i started exercising and lost 2 dress sizes (left them hanging on someone elses’ coat-hanger)
• i changed my hair style (working up to going grey when i’m sixty)
• i celebrated my birthday alone (sigh)
• i failed to join a personal gym (noooooooo dissonance there)

So all in all – a reasonable return on investment

Wiser? Nup. Richer? Yep. Fatter? Nup. Happier? I think so.

Happy new year - I get it

And right back atya – if anyone is reading

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Another excellent artist, James Gleeson explains it as an integral ointment to the process of painting:
If the Light is right the darkness will remain
to hold the form in stasis.
Something will be that had not been before

As a amateur painter I can relate to the Gleeson, as a broken individual I am addicted to the Cohen.

I paint to retreat and make meaning of things.  Right now I’m painting a scene on the river at Woy Woy on the Central Coast of NSW. The painting is of the home of my grandparents.  A retirement home they gave up, when they moved back to Sydney to look after us following the death of my mother. My need to paint this scene, is parallel to my need to make sense of what home means.

The unfinished work sits on an easel in my spare room. And it’s as if there’s a presence in the house. As I pass by the open doorway and look in, it stares back. And I wonder – is it working?  Should I stop now when the potential is still there, before I stuff it up? Do it like it? Would I know?

Undertaking the actual painting is like navigating a battlefield – one part of you motivated and defending the perfect vision of home, memory, life and loss. The other part, questioning and criticising your choice of colour and topic, and always with the eternal chant, “You’re not a painter”, “You’ll muck it up, you know you always do”…crack..

To add insult to injury, watching the progress of a painting is like caring for the wounded. Wandering the corridors with a lamp, you’re motivated by care, diligence and hope.  Wanting to keep it alive, to rub it back, add more and then take off some.

And compelled at the open door, as if addressing an ailing patient, you whisper aloud, “You certainly made the right choice adding in that central focus point”.   “You did well with the tone and depth”. But always when you turn away, if you’re honest, you’ll admit it could just as easily turn septic with the next encounter.

And it can happen at any time. These mistakes that take us on a certain path, unlike the one we started out on, these are the cracks and breakages and they are part and parcel of the artistic – healing process. Gleeson writes,

From the known a newer resonance
shaking old doors open to a separate incarnation

Last week I got an email from my niece, Georgie. Along with it – she’d attached the copy of a beautiful painting she’d just completed. It was the way she processed the loss and separation from her long-time boyfriend. The work was done on silk, full of abundant flowers – each with a symbology of loss, meaning, honour, fidelity and care. Not the work of a depressed woman – but certainly the work of a mind-ful one.

George stayed with me following the death of my husband a couple of years ago. She’d graduated and had given herself a year before applying for college. Most nights we’d sit out on the veranda talking. We spoke about life and hope and loss. We talked of death and battlefields and of caring for the wounded.

As much as you would hope it wouldn’t happen to an 18 year old, she had lost a friend in a car accident only months before and had  seen it first-hand.

Georgie painted her way out of that grief as well.  Embellishing a plaster cast she had made of this girlfriend’s torso some weeks before the accident It was a living canvas – potent with life, as it should be when you’re 18. And it was now frozen in time, attended to by the painter. So she took that cast and painted it with decorative meaningful emblems and gave it to the girl’s mother.  The act was classy, brazen and inspired by love.

There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

For you darling G

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Nothing new about that concept.

However, this last week in particular has led me to ruminate why it is that some people have a genuinely sweeter nature than others.  Kinder, thoughtful, empathetic – you know, all those qualities your parents and teachers tried to instill in you and those you and your therapist(s) tried to re-activate or even find!

One expects to find those qualities shining brightly in younger people – merely because life knocks most of it out of you the more years you stay walking on this planet. And of those older people – my peers and older - who  still manage to hold onto the qualities, well they’re one step away from sainthood.

This week just gone, I farewelled one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. No she didn’t die but she did change jobs and after 11 or so years it felt like a little death. We’d traversed so much landscape together, she was there for me at my nadir and I trust, in some small way I have been there for her at her lowest point.

I admired how she left. A lot of us would skulk away, shunning those who treated us badly and leaving the rest with a gaping hole (given that we are soooooo fabulous, they won’t realise what they’re missing till I’ve gone!).  I know I would do just that. I couldn’t risk finding out how few people actually liked me. I couldn’t face the fact that only the die hard loyalists turned up to my farewell. I have tried it before, and there was only a handful – so I’m right on that score.

But in the case of my friend – there were all staff emails, there were enormous group bbq’s there were farewell afternoon teas, dinners; it was as fine a farewell as any of Nellie Melba’s. And she deserved every one of them.

When we are couragepous to mark significant moments like departures, we give ourselves a great gift – the gift of love. We acknowledge our own splendidness and we play it out on whatever stage we strut our stuff.

When we are not courageous, we remain skulking in the shadows. Afraid of rejection and afraid of love. And in that shadow we make friends with the dark. We believe, often erroneously that we belong there.

When you are there, though, it gives you a great chance to make peace with what you find there. Your own dark thoughts and bitchy behaviour, your limiting beliefs and fear. You also great a great view of the light - In its absence.

Whether you can step into that light, spotted at times of transition, is merely a matter of choice and courage. Friends like mine however model it well and give me a gift far beyond the norm.  A lesson on living well.

All the best dearest s.t.g.

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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.

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We are  thousands of miles from home. I am holidaying in Athens with my twin sister and her twins, Michael and Georgie, our closest girlfriend Rosey, my beautiful niece Madeline and tomorrow my sister Gabby.

So wer’e here miles from home and we are counting every blessing, every sight, every sound and every part of the story.

We spent the day in Delphi. Well my sister, Cate, Rosey and I went to visit the Oracle, whose advice “know thyself, and “no excess” (what dumb advice is that!) made us gob-smacked with awe, so much so that all we could do – on the return to Athens was retreat to a quiet taverna, order a gin and review the photos and mental shapshots of the day.

How do you explain  to your dinner companions what it was that made you cry at Delphi? How do you translate that moment of gob-smacking, oh-my-god-I’m really here- response to hearing the guide say “down to your right is the road where Oedipus met and killed his father”. How do you explain why you want the Oracle to tell you, in 2008 what you you should be doing  with the rest of your life?

It was my nephew who asked me “what was it that was so special about Delphi”?  

“It was my nephew who “tweeted” with me today – and read what I saw at Dephi (while I was seeing it)

It was my nephew who offered to show me and Rosey around Lycabettus Hill tomorrow,

And it was my nephew- who at 4 years old told me to “go home to Australia and find myself a husband” (which, for you disbelievers, I did!).

It was my nephew who get’s what moved me today, who sees me in pursuit of gnosis and beauty.

I love you kid.

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