Writing nooks & other stuff

Tags

Anger, Antique desk, eBay, Elephant in the room, Post-traumatic stress, Pounding heart, PTSD, Rage, Sorrow, Writing nook

Most excitingly, this is the first full day in my new home where I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything in particular.

Okay, I had to do one thing, but it was a very, very good thing.

I arranged delivery for my recent eBay purchase: an old antique writing desk!

It’s quite large and sturdy, and fits neatly into my new writing nook (in a corner of the kitchen).

My nook has its own nifty window looking out on the back courtyard which is all leafy and green and stuff. Its private, gets plenty of light and all up, it’s a great spot for writing!

The pièce de résistance has to be my desk though. Apparently it came from Melbourne’s Treasury Building.

I love it – I’ve yet to absolutely cram it with gadgets and rubbish, so my set up is very minimal at present. But I betcha anything I can’t keep it that way!

It’s very me – suits my personality and style…

The two drawers are really deep – which means they’re probably gonna end up holding a whole bunch of crap I should really throw out.

And someone’s written “Colin” inside one of the drawers in pen with a little cartoon head above the name and there are plenty of ‘customised’ markings – carved initials and stuff on the desk top.

So I’ve kicked my old flat-pack desk to the curb. Actually its in the carport right now on account of the deluging rain (which we need as a country that’s been in drought for a good twenty years now). But its going – either free to whoever wants it or… donating it to the local charity. It’s not even worth selling on eBay.

In other news

Can anyone say ‘elephant in the room‘?

Yeah, okay. I’m still on the road back from this unexpected and painful trip to PTSD-land.

And today I’m not ready to write more just yet about what’s going on. But I’m getting there. The words are forming. Well, to be completely accurate, my words tend to form as pictures and images first… (my possibly rather odd writing technique) before they translate into text…

Moment to moment life right now? It’s a fine balance between keeping myself busy enough so I don’t just stay in bed (would be so easy right now) and having too much going on… which just pushes everything back down again. If I’m too busy then sure, I start to feel better, relatively speaking.

But then once I stop being so busy, my heart pounds like a… a… something that pounds really fast… (apparently it has returned, but its all beat up like a wounded animal) and there’s a lot of physical pain involved with that.

I copped that experience last night, and spent an hour wondering if I was gonna have a heart attack. But then I crashed out on the couch and did a lot of sleeping.

The more meditation I do the better, although sitting still for too long isn’t ideal either right now. Argh!

So, I need to walk the line. I want this stuff to come out, but at the same time I have no wish to become a pillar of stone or completely drive myself nuts. Or repress this stuff any more.

I want to feel it and work through it. I want to drain every last drop of this deep, deep rage and sorrow from my body and mind.

And that I suspect, is gonna take some time.

~Svasti

What’s your bookshelf theme?

Tags

Bedroom, Books, Bookshelf, Dave Pelzer, eBay, Frank McCourt, June Goulding, Lindy Chamberlain, Patricia Hughes, Theme

For the last five weeks I’ve inhabited my parents’ spare bedroom.

It’s not a very large room. It has two beds with floral bedspreads and Queen Anne bed heads. A large gold/gilt rectangular mirror looms above them. In between there’s just enough room for a bedside table with four drawers decorated with faux antique handles. All of this was purchased on eBay.

At the foot of the bed against the window is a medium sized bookshelf, wedged in against the double wardrobes.

This is my mother’s bookshelf, and not my father’s in any way.

It’s full of her recently acquired books and a handful of photo albums from the time when people still did that. There are plenty of new additions to the bookshelf because just over sixteen months ago my mother smashed her arm to smithereens. I mean it – she broke her arm in two jagged pieces just above the elbow in a freaky fall. Mum’s had three surgeries and two bone grafts in this time and now sports a hefty plate and a whole bunch of screws to keep her arm in one piece.

So, she’s been rather housebound, not able to drive or do very much for herself. It’s only in recent months that she’s started to see real healing occurring. There’s been little she could do except read and spend time surfing the interwebs. So eBay became her virtual shopping mall, and for a voracious reader such as she is, it was a blessing and a lifeline.

And once I’ve said good night I close the door and prowl the contents. I’m not sure when it started but this curiosity was born of the lack of things to do out here in Suburbia-urbia.

They’re not all to my taste, so it’s a hunt to find things I’m interested in. Not everything I read worked for me, but I’m kinda bored so I read them anyway.

The first book I picked up was Dave Pelzer’s “My Story” as discussed in a recent post. The next was called “Light in the Window” by June Goulding. The third was “Daughters of Nazareth” by Patricia Hughes. Next was “Angela’s Ashes” and “Tis” by Frank McCourt (no I hadn’t read them before). I’ve just picked up Lindy Chamberlain’s “Through My Eyes“.

You could say I started noticing a theme: children lost or stolen; bad mothers; bad parents; wronged women; anguish; grief.

The story of my mother’s life.

In the 1960’s and 70’s in Australia, New Zealand and UK, if you were unmarried and pregnant you were in huge trouble. Most young girls in this position were sent away so their families weren’t disgraced. Once the babies were born they were forcibly adopted out from the mothers, usually under duress. Or they were just plain stolen.

This is the story of my mother’s life. But more on this another time.

Finding so many books along this theme made me think about my own books, and how I’d sum up the overall contents of my skinny, tall, pale-wood bookshelf.

And it’s this: yoga; meditation; Tantra; philosophy; mythology; runes; biographies; taking care of your health.

What theme does yours hold?

~Svasti