also. this message Andy sent me this morning. priceless.

Re-reading old journal entries. This one, very insightful, from January 24th, the day I set up a temporary pool in the carport.

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24.1

My life has always been one of easy decisions. I don’t feel the strengh of making really deliberate actions. However I have the courage to act upon very strong callings. In this way I feel big decisons always take themselves for me. Come to me. Studying law. Traveling. Claire. Children. Migrating to Australia. Moving to Yandoit. Baking and pastry cheffing. All that have just merged onto me. Like layers of skins added to my core.

Confusion is a really strong indicator of the necessity to not take any decision. This mix of laissez faire and radicalism has brought me here today.

Benoît. 43 years old. Single dad. Australian. French. Pastry chef. Musician.

I dad. I plant. I grow. I sometime shed limbs. Sometimes I’m the limb and I fall.

Music comes to me pretty easily. Writing too. Both feel very healing and give me a voice.

To sit with sadness without trying to adress it. To explore it and fully aknowledge that I wasn’t been wronged, it arises from no cause and carries no values nor judgement is a skill I am constantly learning. I don’t need to turn towards anyone to seek any answers. All necessary answers have been provided. I need to accept them.

Tonight I feel sad for not being able to share that pride I get for making my children’s day so special. Get the plaudit, or just share the joy with another adult. This feels like a need for confirmation, and it seems intimately linked with my fear of being alone/ single/ not seen/ unloved.

So to resolve this sadness is to accept my own worth, my own judgement on my day, reinforce that feeling of worthiness.

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veggie jungle affirmations

yes i overplant

yes it’s kinda lazy and wasteful

yes i could get more produces with less plants and more tending

yes it is extremely pleasing to the eyes

yes that’s just my way

for now

“If hope doesn’t include a plan for change, it is actually hoplessness and avoidance of change. What we do not change, we choose.”

D. Richo, how to be an adult in relationships

“We all have what it takes to feel, but to experience our feelings fully and safely, they need to be “validated” by someone who mirrors them. Mirrorring happens when someone accurately reflects our feelings back to us with a warm welcome. We then know we are understood and it is safe to have and show our feelings. (…)

The opposite of mirrorring is shaming. The less mirrorring we have received, the more ashamed of ourselves we may be. (…)

Shaming is a form of abandonment, and holding onto our shame is self-abandonment. Now we begin to see why we fear abandonment so much. It is the absence of mirrorring, and we need mirrorring to survive emotionally.

We also see why we fear the loss of our partner. To grieve is to feel keenly isolated and bereft of mirrorring. To grieve with supportive others, however, is mutual mirrorring. This si why funerals are public events: our fellow mourners mirror grief to us and we to them. Grief is healed by letting go and by contact.”

D. Richo, How to be an adult in relationship

“Finally, keep in mind that it is always acceptable not to know what something is or mean. This ability to allow for mystery is what John Keats called “negative capability”, or “being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without irritable reaching after fact and reason”. It is in mindfulness that we act just in that way: enduring our unknowing yet sitting serenely. From that position some unique meaning is allowed to ripen over time, in its own time.”

D. Richo, How to be an adult in relationships

of the importance of sometimes, meandering within the aisles of a public library. my visit this afternoon to Castlemaine’s yielded this book. the quotes down there were taken from the five pages introduction. buckle on, and get some tea.

“Love is experienced differently by each of us, but for most of us, five aspects of love stand out. We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes. We show love in the five same ways. […]

Intimacy at its best means giving and receiving the five A’s which are the joys and wealth of a relationship. These five elements or aspects of love also describe our destiny of service to the world as mature spiritual beings. […] Through our spiritual practice we come to know a power greater than our ego and that power nourishes us by granting us the graces of attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing.

There is a touching and encouraging synchronicity – meaningful coincidence – built into our very being: the five A’s are simultaneously the fulfillment of our earliest needs, the requirements of adult intimacy and of universal compassion, and the essential qualities of mindfulness practice. In the splendid economy of human and spiritual development, the same keys open all our evolutionary doors.

Thus the five A’s come to us as gifts in childhood. They are then bestowed to us as gifts to ourselves and to others. They are not the result of efforts but are the automatic overflow of love we receive. We do not have to try; we simply notice that we are attentive, appreciative, affectionate, acceptant, and allowing towards those we love. Showing the five A’s is “heartfulness’, a spiritual practice.

Is there a way to increase our capacity to give and receive these essential elements of love? Yes. […] The work and practice I recommend here are not aimed at making your life together smoother but at helping you relate to its inevitable roughness with humor, ease and generosity. An untamed ego cannot pull that off. Only an awakened heart can do it. Then intimacy is best approached on a spiritual path. As a bonus, our limited personal work can heal the wider world.”

David Richo, How to be an adult in relationships

big rain.

(word has it that 50 mm poured in 40 minutes)

yes. people were surfing on that puddle. Rudi we were very impressed.

sunflowers/ jean’s wordsearch/ battle packing Sid

habits.

jean’s breakfast for the last six months.

miso soup + noodles

a letter to a love, lost.

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23.1

I’m here.

Come get me if you want me.

Please do not worry about hurting me.

Please do worry about hurting you.

Please do not come if you (YOU. not your child. not your ex. YOU) are not over him yet.

Experiencing a bit of a heartbreak, I am listening to a lot of reggae music. I feel slightly off balance. My center has moved for a month towards you. Now that you are gone, I have to readjust it towards me. I know I have the tools, processes and discipline that will help me overcome. Do not dismiss. Do not get carried away. In love as in heartbreak. I will feel the warmth of having been brave. All of it. The burn too. Of having shared my fragile parts. Shown my emotions.

I don’t know why you are shutting this door now but just as I entrusted you with my rawest words so need I trust you with your choice. I will keep my door ajar. For now. I can feel I won’t hold it very long.

For life over the last years has taught me one main lesson. When minding spaces where you don’t feel wanted, be extremely vigilant. Do not fall asleep. Constantly assess if you are safe. If they fill up your needs. And always be ready to retreat. It took me 43 years, some of them I now regret, to learn it. I owe myself to heed to that lesson. Now and forever. 

Today I lost freedom of movement and connections between my neck and my left shoulder. Woke up with a sore upper back, against common sense stuck with my pull up routine. Now stiff and suffering, the pain dominates me. Impossible to lay down, or to rotate my head.

Each movement of my right shoulder seems to pressure the space between my shoulder blades. And creates pain in my left shoulder. Rushed through supermarket isles looking for Ibuprofen, ate two tablets on the carpark. Waiting now for the pain to subside.

This feels like a very physical manifestation of where I’m at. A very fitting end to our short lived romance.
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Edit/ update:

The pills did work, and after a long day rest, the pain slowly moved outwards and subsides now only on the outer edge of my left shoulder. Laying down on my back and turning my neck around are welcome back additions to my daily life. The heart is healing and will slowly recover, entirely.

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rumble in the jungle.

Sometimes happiness is just putting together a cheap swimming pool, filling it up with a ton of water, and moving a few pot plants around it. Who needs a carport in summer anyway?

Morning walk/ a painting

a trip to the Bendigo Art Gallery, to see a temporary exhibition called Soul Fury. Exploring womanhood, islam, and contemporary politics.

a sunset on sheppard’s flat, Leanganook

in a sealed envelope, before to leave the house, Jean left me 25 cents and this letter. ❤️

dear dad i really miss you when i’m at mum’s. I already know that because i do every time. I’ll try to write a letter every day but no promise. I love spending time with you. You always thinking of the good all of us can do. You’re always sweet and kind. I love you so much i would go to the end of the world to find you. Love, jean

a giant gum leaf !

heading back home in super car

there unfortunately will be no documenting the thunderstorm that stroke Cheshunt on friday night. enough to say we lost a cheap tent in the rain, cuddled in bed counting seconds between lightnings and thunders, always more than eight, didn’t sleep until -deep in the night- we found ourselves laughing hysterically, realizing it was finally over. it had passed and no tree had fallen around us. i prayed a lot that night. life seemed fragile when the storm hit.

camping in Cheshunt, day 3.

power’s lookout/ paradise waterfall

camping in Cheshunt, day 2

selfying and kayaking in lake Howell / some clouds

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camping in Cheshunt, day 1.

the camp / a resident koala / the river

when Zsuzsa snaps me.

sunday eve a the res, happy.

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a facebook memory. when a pet parrot visited the Newstead pool, january 2nd, 2019

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the bricks and I, tired.

Nouvel an, 2022

shadow + reeds

benoît, december 26th 2021.

7 pm in Sandon, Victoria.

christmas.

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boxing day.

big bro’s birthday card

Jean, 8 ans.

Depuis un mois Jean savait exactement ce qu’elle voulait pour son anniversaire. Un gâteau pastèque, une boîte a couture, un voyage en voiture dans le siège de devant pour célébrer avec un milk shake au jardin botanique l’enterrement de son siège enfant.

Elle a eu tout cela, et plus encore, avec des crêpes (violettes) d’anniversaire, des boucles d’oreille, des legos, une écharpe et un puzzle, et beaucoup de tissus.

Parfois le bonheur, c’est savoir ce qu’on veut. et aller le chercher.

yesterday

le travail, l’entreprise et la famille. des notions controversiales. certains jours une petite entreprise se comporte comme une grande famille (spécialement quand la dite entreprise emploie beaucoup de migrants). pour le meilleur et pour le pire. le meilleur c’était samedi soir, chez nos voisins vignerons de boom town.

christmas break up party, das kaffehaus, 2021.

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rapid covid test and hapiness.

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there is a UV light in every kit.

testing days.

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how Jean draws Murphy.

confettis. ballons. aiguilles.

the house with the peculiar pets.

yes. magpies like to sunbathe.

no. magpies do not eat soap bubbles.

c’est dingue l’énergie que ça demande, d’organiser une fête d’anniversaire pour ses enfants. Bon anniversaire d’avance Jean.

l’équilibre précaire (living on the edge)

une semaine en musique

les Vardos, at the tap room.

Jean, solo, duo avec Iris, et toute lq classe de piano de Deb Ferguson.

zsuzsa

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parlez moi de la pluie, et non pas du beau temps.

la crèche de mamie

kickstarting summer 2021