Apple Scum

22nd October 2011 Saturday

For a while now I have been feeling foetal inside - curled away from my life, contracted and sludgey, telling myself I can’t write any more. Fear in my heart again. Looking normal on the outside - chopping wood, sweeping. Waiting for the hour to come when I can read my book and dissolve into another world.

This morning while it’s still dark I lie awake and rehearse the shape of my day. What’s urgent? What can I leave out? Where did I put that birthday card for my brother-in -law? Will I have time to buy lemons? Will the agapanthus plants we brought back from Madeira survive another day? Is it too cold to prune the hedge? My prospective day feels like a pillow case I’m stuffing one more thing into - and there is a pillow in there already. I don’t want to get up.

In the end, late morning sun warms our backs as we hack away at the hedge, the overgrown viburnum and the dead hydrangeas in the front garden. My husband loads up the car with sackfuls of leaves and branches and drives to the dump while I chop a whole box of our apples and feed them through the juicer. It makes two bottles of clear sweet pink juice after straining off the thick muddy froth at the top.

This afternoon I lie on a massage couch and our beautiful Indian healer says,

Does your head hurt?

All the time, I say.

And she gives me a wonderful massage deep into my skull,

Where your grief is buried, she says.

She also says if I keep turning away from my life everything will become an effort and I will stagnate. She recommends I start my yoga practice again which will strengthen and expand me - help me to cope with my circumstances.

Tonight I feel clearer - as if the apple scum in my head has blown away. And I can unfurl into my blog again. One word at a time.