When I first moved into my house, I stated that I wouldn’t do anything to it until I’d lived here for awhile… I was rather pleased with myself for stating that because it showed to me that I’d actually learned something from past mistakes made due to rushing in, letting loose, excitedly doing stuff in a random flailing manner… then wishing I hadn’t done it and had instead taken a long pause, thought things through a bit more (maybe even thought myself out of doing anything at all), and other things I think when I’m regretting my hasty deeds.
But as so often happens when I make statements of intent, or plans of any sort, the universe laughs heartily and waits for me to do what I said I wouldn’t do, and for my plans to go awry so that it can then watch me deal with what I hadn’t prepared myself for dealing with.
The reasonable, wise with age me which I wanted to be observed as a crazy me who I actually am tore holes in the fabric of the house and then… had a bit of a crisis because someone was going to have to fix those holes and I didn’t think that someone could possibly be me as…
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La Linea – one of the cartoons which I loved and which shaped me during my formative years
one of the things this series showed was that we are sometimes the creator of our problems as well as the creator of our solutions, and we may create one so that we can create the other
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I’ve always been better at destruction than construction (I have Pluto and Uranus in the 1st house of my natal chart, and they tend to override any caution of having Virgo rising – Virgo rising is like a parent who tries to impart discipline to two unruly children who spent their formative years raised by wolves… the wolves also gave up trying to teach these wild kids the rules of the pack society).
However this Summer… something came over me… and I have been slowly and steadily repairing the holes I’ve made (Saturn is transiting my 4th house – the house of home), as well as holes which others made (such as that one in the render on the side of the house which someone whom I was considering hiring to do repair work made with their fist – needless to say he did not get hired), and ones caused by nature wearing and tearing at the building.
Today I received a damp-proof course kit – I’m testing out a couple of different systems (one system has already been tested, I won’t know if it works for a couple of months) to see which one will actually stop a couple of walls sucking water up from the ground like they’re straws… this does require making more holes in the structure of the house (although at some point in the past someone who lived here did what I’m about to do, which may mean this won’t work or will only work for a short period, so I can use the existing holes)… not so long ago (as in before this Summer) I would have never thought of myself as the go-to person to fix this kind of thing, but after many failed attempts to find someone else to do it… I was the only candidate left by process of elimination.
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Barbapapa – another cartoon I loved during my formative years
One of the things this series showed was that we have many diverse aspects, many different selves within the one person we know as myself… sometimes an aspect of ourselves needs someone outside of ourselves to embody those abilities until we learn to incorporate them, own them, be them too (not in a creepy body-snatching way, though)
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Living in this house thus far has been an incredibly intriguing experience… the turning point in my interaction with my new home came when I stopped trying to do things properly and started doing things according to instinct. That was a hard hurdle to jump over because…
my relationship with my instinct has always been iffy…
there was one time in my life when I became convinced that I had no instinct at all…
at another time in my life I was certain that I should do the opposite of whatever my instinct suggested because it was leading me against the current, and I should be flowing with the current…
but then there were those times when I sorely wished I’d listened to my instinct…
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Les Shadoks (and les Gibis) – another comic series which shaped me (in a crooked manner)
One of the things this series showed was the need for duality, for good versus bad, for annoying pointy versus lovely rounded, for never satisfied with anything versus satisfied with everything, or something like that…
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Letting instinct take the lead, with thought acting as an assistant… has proved to be efficient… but thought is a bit confused by the turn of events, and its relegated status… yet if I let thought take the lead suddenly everything gets difficult, complicated and mistakes are made which then have to be undone.
This new way of doing things has caused my brain to rewire itself in other areas too…
such as in how I view myself – I’ve been coming to fewer conclusions about myself due to my usual thinking mode being switched off. In other words if I make an error while doing things my thought process doesn’t kick in to conclude that this error = I’m an idiot, I can’t get anything right, I’m a failure at everything I do, etc. Instead that part gets skipped and the error is just an error and instinct tells thought to adjust parameters to deal with the error and not waste time, energy and effort coming to conclusions about my self.
Not coming to conclusions about myself has lead to not coming to conclusions about others either… it’s a bit like I’m rewriting my software program, and the new tweaks are rather pleasant (I’m sure they come with glitches, but the old program was riddled with those so they’re par for the course).
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The Berenstain Bears – my fav book of theirs
One of the things this book showed was that sometimes your search for the new, the change, the different, leads you back to the old, the comfort zone, the same, but the journey was required to gain a shift in perspective to appreciate what you always had
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One of the ripples of this change of approach has been – I wake up less grumpy than I used to do, and that is mind-bending because I thought waking up grumpy was a part of my identity (there was a picture of me as a child of about 3yrs of age which was taken just after I woke up – I was still wearing my nightie and holding my blanket, and to this day I remember it even though it has long since vanished into atoms because it captured my essence and I have rarely seen my grumpiness so precisely photographed, even though my grumpiness was photographed quite a bit…)
The way I think upon first waking has been altered…
The way I think has altered…
not sure how long this alteration will last (kind of like I don’t know how many of my repairs to this house will last)… this too may well pass… but while it’s here, now… it’s opening my old system to new ideas and a new way of being.
Will it change who I am? No… but I’m not trying to change who I am (not anymore… that was a fix which wasn’t needed – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it… but what if you think it’s broke and needs fixing, or what if others keep telling you you’re broke and need fixing… and all effort made to fix what didn’t need fixing was… a necessary experience, I guess), however it does give who I am new avenues of expression, as well as new ways of perceiving and receiving what comes my way.
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Anansi the Spider – my very first guru
One of the things this Ashanti story imparts is… spiders are awesome… which means all those personal bugs which bug us may be awesome but we need to figure that out in our own time
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I feel as though I’ve sort of stepped out of the shadows into the light…
at a time when…
well, one news article I read about the recent eclipse said something which struck me as amusing while reporting about all the thousands of people who displaced themselves to get into the path of total darkness…
One consistent factor of being me has been that I seem to invariably be doing the opposite of what the rest of the world seems to be doing, even when I try to join in I end up going off on a tangent where no one else wants to go…
I used to hate that about myself, but… some aspects of who you are need for you to grow into them, make friends with the enemy (who may end up being your internal bf).
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Eloise at The Plaza – I have to admit that I did not like Eloise… even though (perhaps because) I was compared to her quite a few times as a child because I was born while my parents were staying in a hotel, and part of my formative years were spent living in hotels (due to my fathers work and wandering while dragging his family with him ways). I was NOT allowed to behave like she did…
(although there used to be photo evidence of me driving my Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car down a hotel corridor… and I did once get asked by staff at a hotel to stop rollerskating through the lobby… the lobby had marble floors!!!)
question is – did I not like her because she was allowed to be and do what I was forbidden from being and doing?
One thing this book imparts is… those we hate may be closer to us than those we love, and therein lies the rub
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I shared images from creations which influenced my childhood in some way because sometimes the influences of these creations shape us when we are young and also shape us when we are adults (without us maybe even noticing that they’re still with us because we think we left them behind us, as we left our childhood behind… or think we did, but did we?)…
so…
my question for you is – What creation which caught your attention, either through love or hate or a mix of both, when you were a child, and still lingers with you now that you’re an adult?
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I used to get compared to Pippi a lot too… she was weird, a mess, and oddly strong, like me, so I was kind of okay with the comparison...
An Upturned Soul 
Cool! Zen and the art of renovating! I like that. Yes renovating or building for women who aren’t experienced in that field is definitely a challenge and forces us to exercise parts pf our brain that we have not previously had to use. After a little while we can realise that sometimes it is not a good idea to fully follow a handyman’s advice as they aren;t invested in our property and probably just want to quickly patch up any cracks, get paid and get out of there.
In building under the house, I have stubbornly persisted in trying to avert any future rising damp problems before the walls are erected.
These days we also have to plan for climate change in that we are getting heavier downpours of rain in shorter periods.
I was born with a love of books and probably 1st. admired and envied the Cat in the Hat for his impeccable,smiling insouciance of easily fixing messes, whilst I was suffering from heightened anxieties and sensitivities. He was everything I wished I could be.
As I got a bit older, I devoured Enid Blyton books whenever I was lucky enough to receive 1 and totally related to George the tomboy who had a big dog ,”sigh”, had fab spaces to go feral in and was sullen just like me.
We weren’t allowed to watch much t.v. but I loved Dr. Who.
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Thank you very much for sharing 🙂
It took me ages to get around to reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance because I didn’t realise that it wasn’t a manual for fixing a motorcycle 😉 It sounds to me as though you could definitely write a Zen and the Art of House Building. These days they usually construct buildings with damp-proofing, and there are plenty of options, but my house is a couple of decades old and I’m not sure if those who built it planned on it lasting as long as it has. It’s a mishmosh of building styles (part of it wasn’t for habitation originally), changes and fixes which have happened over the decades… it definitely suits me, I have crumbly and damp bits too.
Dr. Seuss’s creations are awesome! There is something relaxing and reassuring about his work, he had a way of making you feel okay about being you in whatever shape or form you were in, and he explained the madness of the world. Although I did once have a Dr. Seuss inspired nightmare, but it was kind of a fun and funny one – a Wocket in my Pocket type of creature was trying to strangle me for my glass of gingerale.
I don’t think I’ve ever read an Enid Blyton book, not sure why… perhaps because she often had children in groups and I was a loner and couldn’t really relate to that kind of dynamic.
Which Doctor is your Doctor? And have you watched any of the recent ones?
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Funny you say that re: Zen….We had the book lying around at home and I used to look at the the cover and think “Why all the fuss about a motorcycle book?”
Which Dr. Who did I like?
Well for the first 3 years after my big move, I lived in a new big shed on a large parcel of land and had no T.V. connection so I knew nothing about Christopher Eccleston until some years later when I moved again and actually bought a T.V. Instant swoon!
I have never seen a more gorgeously sculpted face. And I loved watching the many expressions changing his face like clouds passing over a sky.
When I was young I loved Tom Baker’s cheekiness and his assistant dressed in animal furs who was his actual wife. The feral one, I loved her.
I really liked David Tennant and Matt Smith and loved Karen Gillan, the last 2 made a great team.
I thought the writer became too indulgent and lost the plot with the later series and I lost interest.
I found Clara just a bit too cute and Peter Capaldi, Really?
I loved Matt Lucas and Pearl Bailey as well
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Sorry I meant Pearl Mackie!
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