Spring Em/BOG/iment

A simple life under constant construction

Hello friends of the stack,

I hope you are extremely well this fine March day. There is a little something tingling our arm hairs, trickling down our spines since the equinox, do you feel it? Do you feel a subtle swelling?

And though the days and nights are of equal length, our moods may not be. It is okay to feel it all, this time: Spring being a great welcoming, not quite the wide brimming of a spoon-fed summer but the subtle awakening of the senses, an opening.

I am no novice to a building site. I was born into one, went through another highly stressful one as a child and another two in my early twenties. Surrounded by a sea of newspapers and noises I could not unhear. I wonder what the building job gods are trying to tell me? And why I have brought another one on myself, this time?

Anyhow, I think the world is warming slowly up without us, creative juices flowing down each leaf and stream of consciousness ever so slightly quivering. I found time for some fun exchange with plants between the dust and dirt. E-BOG-iment in full spring mode, and my reasoning behind it.

Unfortunately the creative flows have also been blocked, in my case, by life, work and a building job I am right in the middle of, (oh but so near the end..). These past weeks have at the same time been heartbreaking and magical, exhausting and bone achingly beautiful. Without power or free running water, basic efforts may be in vein, or come with a march up a hill, or a rummage for matches. In other words, life has become an adventure in constant construction.

I have spent long days sanding, chopping, drilling, tapping, painting, stripping, scribbling and repainting. Fixing everything with glue or sand paper or leftover pieces of timber. And I am no carpenter, I am stranger to the finesse of exact measurements and perfect angles, and have been told many times over the years how incapable I am of these exactitudes. However, life is more about giving it a go, is it not?

If at first you don’t succeed, try and try and try and try again? And if you don’t succeed then, then what?

We spent a whole day cutting a countertop for a sink, carrying it miles across bog land, wet marsh, field, forest and rain-track only to realise it did not fit the sink and had to be recut, twice. I thought out shoulders would never reconnect to our arm sockets. The frustration when the tap did not come with a connector, the water pipe leaked. The screws hit knots in the wood and wouldn’t come out.

Nonetheless, my heart did rest and I did fall into sleep again. The sink sat happily into its socket at last and I cried.

I think if you grew up believing something wasn’t for you because of social conditionings, it can be fun to override them. To give yourself a go.

Also plants. I love them, but I don’t always know how to grow them. And part of me believes it too magical a process for me to make happen.. growers can you relate? Or can you water me some of your wisdom?

So I’ve been living in a building site these past three weeks, and my whole life seems to have revolved around the stove, which is interesting. Watering, cooking, showering, cleaning, warming. All of it revolves around the fire, which makes me feel like a digitally enhanced cavewoman, to say the leafy..

I’ve realised how capable we are at humans, when we are desperate. That we are capable of so much more than what parents or society might say. And that when you’re at a loose end, isn’t that the time to try?

So I have become Handi-woman without really meaning to. Building things out of leftover scrap-wood. Drinking the dust all day and night. Forgetting where I put my keys, coat, notebooks etc because they were hiding under layers of cardboard, packs of screws, laundry. Speaking of laundry I haven’t done mine!

I finished a great book called Lost in Ibiza this month which was a happy distraction and brought me back to the days I spent living in caves in the Islas Canarias mid pandemic (feels like another lifetime..). At the end of the novel all the Ibicrnco locals, millionaires and hippies unite in the town of Sam Juan as a fire scorches half the Island. They all come together in a plea for Life.

The world has become so divided it hurts. This is also what the people in power want : to divide us. In the online world people are so quick to push down others thoughts and experiences and this only increases the divide. Of course we need more open listening but in acts of injustice the only way seems to be to act, persist. It can feel endless. It hurts so much, so deep. It can be hard to imagine the end but we must.

I’ve also started a new book : Why Women Grow. It’s seems to be a lot about the relationship between gardening and being a mother and having children or not. I am intrigued to read more and will report back..

What are your garden dreams, if any? What are you building?

Where are your dreams?

Do you feel the spring?

I love to know,

Ailbhe

Xxxx