'In the midst of heavy dialogue.....open space is always there"

The camellia flowers drenching the bushes in the park

are nearly over now....

turning brown at the edges...

dropping into a pink carpet on the ground below.

All flowers have an association for me... with a person, a place, a time, a memory.

Camellias .....a giant tree covered in them in Robin's aunt and uncle's garden in Dorset.

Magnolia - I knew the name even before I knew what the flower looked like....  A song of that name  by J J Cale which punctuated the nights of my student days in Cardiff.

Vinca, periwinkle - my mother. She planted it in all her gardens - and ours - such good ground cover she'd say. And it always was.

Grape Hyacinth - my father. In the front garden of their house in Honiotn springing up between the daffodils.

Pyracantha - the fire bush. Robin and our garden here. We planted it against a wall...it didn't take ...we took it to the allotment and it grew rampant like the sun.

Mahonia - Californian grape. There was a bush by the front gate in our garden in St Albans...prickly leaved and perfumed, producing mock bunches of tiny purple grapes in the autumn.

Marsh marigold - kingcup. All along the banks of a river...somewhere in the south west of France...the same day we saw a flash of kingfisher skimming the surface of the water.

Buttercup.  A memory of picknicking with Robin in a sloping field of them - up to our ankles in buttercups and daisies -  high above the sea somewhere along the Devon coastal path.

Clematis montana -  in the garden here - rambling over the fence from next door...getting intwined with our honeysuckle and Russian vine...loving its evening scent wafting through the open kitchen door in the spring.

Tulips - my brother. When he and his partner lived in Holland he used to bring me wonderful selections of unusual Dutch tulips for my birthday in October and which I planted in pots on the patio    to surprise me in the spring.

I forgot to replant the tulips I stored away in the shed this year....or at the end of last year....everything so uncertain with no appetite for spring then. So my patio pots are empty. Like me, biding my time, waiting for inspiration...or something new to emerge...or not.

This morning I make time to mediate ...at least my version of it...just sitting with my mind wandering all over the place.....but sitting all the same.  And then after some yoga, reading the Bhuddist nun Prema Chodron's " When things fall apart."

I have quoted her in this blog before. She talks about mastering the most difficult  Bhuddist practice of loving kindness towards oneself - Maitri.

" What makes Maitri such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem.

We are not striving to make pain go away or become a better person.

In fact we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

This starts with realising that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end.

It is just the same kind of normal human experience that has been happening to people since the beginning of time.

Thoughts, emotions, moods and memories come and they go. 

Basic nowness is always here.

In the midst of all the heavy dialogue with ourselves open space is always there.

I'm in love with that Open Space. And with these ideas. And at a complete loss about how to practise them. To give up control....to not try and make the pain go away...  to realise that Robin's death is not an ending...to not want to be a better person...to stop my striving ... and my heavy dialogue with myself. ...

To let myself fall apart....and come back together...again and again...."to make room for grief and for misery, for relief, for joy...to let life be a good teacher, a good friend"....what a peaceful..and challenging path that would be.

Maybe just sitting still in the mornings.... even for a little while..... but often....is where the space can open up for me.....after heavy dialogue ....peace... and still knowing that everything is always in transition..."nothing ever sums itself up in the way we like to dream about.'