…and I will tell you what you lack.”

There is something quite substantial that happens when one travels beyond the comforts of a known environment as we have just done by moving country. A sort of plucking of feathers, stripping of skin, losing of wits to no end. As our tightly wound ball of form unraveled, there were certainly moments of the wheels coming off before we could fly. Yes, they were invitations to be more present, but with my carrot gradually grated and knickers slowly twisted.

What was there to do but breathe and deploy extended conversations to the Divine Mother Mary.

I met Her in my childhood, the Mother. As the daughter in a Catholic family, I received her rosy-cheeked, open-armed, gentle-smiled statuette for my bedside altar while my brother received Jesus nailed to the cross in all His sacrificial glory.

Hers a clear symbol of embrace.

His of suffering.

A hearty duo.

Embrace. Suffering.

Being a deeply introverted child, a mind field of conversations regularly played out beneath my tousled locks with that to the Holy Mother a constant.

She was sweet.

Her voice soothed with an echo of otherness but still held the twang of the Cape Flats because that was where she sat perched in my room. Interestingly enough, I could not hear her in the haloed hallways of the church or the compulsory Sunday school classes but only in the sanctuary of my little room. When my childhood home could be home no longer, I entered a period of not hearing her.

Life with its complex initiations became too noisy.

It was on a day at the water’s edge, when I contemplated how my adolescent self could possibly traverse the multi-layered trauma I was experiencing, that I heard her gentle voice again. And to this day, it is the place that I hear her most clear, through the sacred waters.

As we settle into a true blessing of a home space cradled by Nature (albeit for 2 months only), I reflect upon the essence of the Mother in a land that acknowledges her presence so devotedly, Portugal. Navigating our way through a different culture and protocols, we are regularly called deeper into trust. All of our perpetual experiences that continually played out in daily routine now have an immediate pause button as we communicate slowly, listen deeply and animate and gesture our way through conversation with the locals. Once embraced, it becomes an opportunity to see the connectivity beyond the barriers of language and culture and to communicate deeper, from a unified field. Affirming that despite the language and perception barriers, the essence of all is the same.

The language of the heart needs no translation.

Gifts of guidance arrived this week, during my daily walks in nature and in dreams of the deep night. Some days expressed moments in which I found myself still flitting between a life in Cape Town that once was, the guilt-edged emotions of leaving my beloved mother and fur baby behind (for now), deep gratitude for the soft and nourishing landing of the present, and the lure of conversation of the uncertain future. It is a constant dance of past, present and future and I honor the call to simply observe.

I notice how once fully present in the moment, gratitude beams pure and eternal, and my loved ones feel closer than ever as we commune deeper in essence.

The dream…

I sit on a pebbled beach watching the blinding cinema of the sea in a dress damp with fog. The sky is a muddle of greys and the horizon a rolling cinematic reel of scenes and visuals. Visuals of life past, present, and perhaps yet to come.

My body begins to stir with all the emotions embedded in those scenes. Before my eyes, these scenes of past, present and future begin to melt. Scenes of community gathered in delicious mealy huddles, walks on the promenade with mom, cuddles with my fur child, familiar landscapes, all begin to merge and collapse to the floor like a multi-coloured candle left in the blazing sun.

I stare at this molten mass, mesmerised by its nondescript density while the world it previously inhabited is now an opaque sheath with one word blazoned in the darkness…”Remember”

I feel unsettled on the banks of the pebbled shore. I am deeply concerned that the only way to resurrect the melted blob of images would be to remember. Because as it solidifies in the coolness of the day, my ability to do so evaporates. I think of ways to ignite them and as if my thoughts were etched in the sky above, a gloved nurses’ hand appears holding a needled syringe with a drip in tow. She wears a voluptuous scent of all things medically sterile but yet strangely comforting. A vein in my arm rises greedily and she plunges the needle into its hungry seam. A pink liquid flows from the bag and into my system, activating the labyrinth of tunnels and chambers that exist throughout my body containing memory.

After a brief moment of narcotic silence, the opaque canvas on the horizon before me starts to flicker once again with the electric potential of imagery.

“What would you like to see?” she asks me in a voice warm and heavy with kindness.

“The canvas is clear… and all yours”

Before I can even acknowledge the power of this holy pause, an automated wheel begins its faithful churn and a series of familiar images start to appear. Part of me feels relief for its reappearance but another questions its formation.

Who is this person?

What is this liquid?

How has it resurrected the imagery I thought to be my life?

What the heck is going on!?

She stares deeply into my eyes and it feels like I am looking out through hers.

“There we go dear” she smiles and pulls the needle out, gently placing pressure on the point of insertion.

With an almost immediate effect, I witness the canvas birth crowded hours of experiences. Visions peopled with images and scenes constructed out of ideas, feelings, tendencies, and associations of my physical lifetime sprinkle pictorial fantasies, myth, and metaphor. I begin to ache for the moments I left behind. I feel tumbled as my mind slips from its moorings of the moment and chases the dragon of familiarity who begins to circle, wanting to settle once again in its cozy lair whose comfort is so great, it feels like a second soul inside my skin.

Despite the supportive activation of the pink medicinal liquid, I feel aged and begin to hobble through the bowels of familiarity. Its corridors and contents are no longer comfortable as I begin to realise that I am being fed a consensual hallucination.

Meanwhile, the ocean before me stirs and the tide begins to rise in response to my unsettlement. It gently begins to lap the shore where I am seated and creatures of dream and foam begin to tickle my toes with their icy chill coating my feet in tiny droplets.

In each droplet, I see beings in an embryonic stage, hints of a civilisation to come. Inspiration arrives as I begin to think of what it is I would like to sculpt on the canvas instead. With excitement I see myself in many roles past, present, and future all framed and finely filtered. Charged with the electric energy of Creation, I tremble with the energy of a starved artist about to devour a naked canvas.

But as I leap into action, a voice boots me off course.

“Tell me what you boast of…

“… and I will tell you what you lack.”

I wake with wisps of the morning mist clinging to the giant pine trees that surround our home, like memories of the past refusing to dissipate. Rays of the birthing sun fall across the garden floor and the moment is caressed with abundant shafts of warm light.

As I ponder the words from the old Spanish proverb that pulled me out of the nights dream meandering, I am reminded that in this moment, all I am invited to do, is to just be.

Just.be.here.Now