Falling for life’s flavours

A melt-in-your-mouth kind of melancholy..

Hello dear friend,

Are we well? What’s Sunday looking like?

I don’t know about you but I’ve been doing a lot a lot of rummaging, too much maybe. Rummaging, not really for answers but to sort of hijack myself into calm. The calm that comes with knowing that life can never be like it was last year, and try as we might we can’t fix it all. Too many thoughts get cloudy sometimes, especially when they take us out of present moment experience, and especially in the damp unknown of the world when all things of sodden, sorry nature draw back and in upon themselves.

In other words, it has rained a swamp, there’s been lots of flying zombies about, it has ached a great deal (but I’m on the mend!) and I have also fallen in love — in many, myriad ways, with the flavours in life and all of its possible expressions. Mostly the colours that run abundant — tangerine ruby sun, when the rain smells kind of warm, miso glazed tofu, when the paracetamol kicks in. ☁️

Mostly I have fallen in love with flavours, and have found that when you are prevented from the fullness of life, whether that’s due to injury or illness or some other mysterious reason, you can always find flavours to make things a little more fun. For example last year when I didn’t have a home base and everything felt very chaotic and uprooting, I focused on the pauses between my breaths. The confusion of putting your heart and blood and soul into something that makes you question every minute. Sometimes we can seem so certain of what we want that reality sends us into a whirl: is it really possible? Are we going to be okay? But alas, life continues. We may not always learn or do it ever again but we always live. The flavours and depths (even when you have lost your sense of smell, or smile) — are always there for us to fall into.

I’ve had a slightly off one this month with burn injury and trying to shake a fever. And I’ve been trying to play with anxiety rather than dive fully into it — seeing it as just something to have fun with and challenge rather than just get worse for worries. Thoughts of ‘oh no, oh no, oh— are not very sustainable lifestyle. I have tried to prevent myself from falling down a steep hill of despair or when mind proclaims ‘I’m going to get a seizure’. Because we all know that fear breeds fear and anxiety is never the answer to anxiety!

Rather than letting our anxieties run rampant through the ethers and ebbs and airwaves, we can play. Something I’ve noticed is a lot of the worry I carry - fear of death, fear of fear, fear of losing people, fear of being labelled and hurt by someone close to me — are not coming from me but from things existing on the outside. To play our anxiety like real gamers of this broken, beautiful world — is to find the flavours. Anxiety and worry and sadness can take so much of our experience. They exist in plenty all over the world. In many ways, they set the tone of today. We can’t exist without one another, but we all carry our own worries, thoughts and opinions wherever we go.

We can try tasting more simplicity instead. Bitter, sweet, sour. Yummy food is one way. What about textures. How many colour variations do you see, can you count them on your fingertips? Do report back to me how many, I’m always surprised of what the eye has the ability to see without any words at all. . . There are flavours rippling on the inside too. Flavours that leave us tongue tied and toe tangled. My jaws get so clenched sometimes, I must remember to give them some yoga too. Sometimes play means stepping into whatever we are feeling in this feeling in this here and now. Sometimes being forced to slow down and be slug-like can be the womb we need to remember, but it’s never easy. Sometimes a train is hurtling through our mind at ninety before we’ve gotten dressed.

I’ll admit I had a hard time finding the to write this newsletter, and not sure quite why. I had been tossing it up in my head for days through fever and head cold and lack of solid sleep. And maybe writing is part of the problem, or maybe it’s all play and should be treated as such. Because now I am happily hunkering down and realise that sometimes, a tiny force is all you need to get going (and may the force always be with you!). I look forward to more play time with the blossoming of Spring. We are all still waking up, I suppose. Thank you for being.

big love always,