Thursday 8 December 2011

Surviving or Thriving?

8th December 2011 Thursday


Tonight my head is swirling with pictures of a tropical island in the Pacific ocean. My brother has just come back from Fiji where he has been on retreat in his spiritual community. The slideshow of lush green photos and his enthusiasm transport me out of my tiredness and remind me that nothing is impossible. Everything just feels harsher now when the wind is rattling at my window, nights are long and dark and my energy is a weak flickering flame.


This afternoon I made rich chocolate brownies for my husband’s ceramics exhibition on Saturday and supper for my vegan brother - a hazelnut roast spiked with cumin and allotment sweet potatoes like long pink fingers. My husband dug them up when I was in Portugal - a huge bagful and a big surprise as he thought they hadn’t grown at all.


Maybe it shows that a tropical plant can live in a northern country - but not grow big and fat and healthy. Like me in the winter - uprooted from the red African soil where I was planted as a child - surviving but not thriving. And I can see that it could be the other way around - if I flicked that switch in my head. Nothing is impossible.

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