I cried, my love.
My dog is covered in butter and I am in love.
Here is the audio version of this post if you need, or prefer, it read it to you:
I cried.
I cried this morning.
I cried this morning watching my love.
I cried this morning watching my love with my dog.
I cried this morning watching my love with my dog, their hands covered in ghee because an Indian Ayurvedic expert told him that this would help her.
The sun draping over them both, her delighting in his attention to her skin, and him helping me...helping her.
In our decade together (the dog not my love ((although if you believe in psychics, like I do, then this is not the first lifetime I've cried while witnessing him
...love.)) I have tried everything to help her feel less itchy.
The world makes her itchy.
Which is a sensation I understand completely. Except my discomfort doesn't manifest in sores on my skin, rather the deep need to retreat into a pillow fort of my own creation where the stimulation isn't raw. Where the world doesn't roar. A place where I don't inherently pour all of me out to fill the cups of others because I never learnt to turn my own tap.
When I tell him his actions made the waves of love swell, he says, "Oh, baby, she is an extension of you, and I love you," like it's the most obvious thing to say.
It is the most obvious thing to say.
As someone who loves words I've been all too often delighted by the fanciful linguist.
The wicked tongue of folks who cannot walk with their talk in their limbs.
Its a hard revelation to be a pen wielding lady learning love letters are only loving in motion.
Which is why my dalliances here come without rhyme or reason, I don't want to give you words for the sake of words...the world is too noisy. I only want to say the things that feel like they need to said...and shared. The words that come from the knowing place that knows to cry when love is near. But I do owe my Grit Guild babes a June chapter of that I am oh so aware and I will deliver...as I am a woman of her word...but not of time.
I am sitting at an intersection of perimenopause, world fatigue, forty-something-year old reckoning, neurodiverse understanding (and therefore grief), so many ideas and so little energy, of facing myself in the mirror and thinking what do the next forty years of my life (if I'm oh so lucky) look like? And what do I want? And how do I do the things that I want to do when there's so few models of how, and being that model is terrifying.
I am scared and angry and wistful and strong.
Stronger than I've ever been because I'm softer than I've ever been.
I have learnt to turn my tap off and run the energy back into my well. But only just. I hope I get the time to learn this well.
My love loves my dog.
My love made me tea while I scribble this, in the sunshine, while the Butcher bird sings.
My love helped me make my first ever apple pie and then waited nearby while I made the next two, so I could learn on my own, but was right there if I needed them.
I made an apple pie.
I've made three apple pies.
Which made me realise we are so entirely capable of more.
We are so entirely worthy of more.
But I'm thinking the getting of it sits in some level of discomfort.
Of feeling nervous, anxious, and ill equipped. Feelings we're taught should be left with our much younger selves.
Is this why adults are so terrified of young people? Their willingness to name their discomfort. Their inherent pulling away? Their demanding of us to do more and be better and questioning if this really is a good as it gets. It must be, because when one of these young people get too loud we silence their feed, or shoot them in the head.
I am scared of my own discomfort.
Of being out of control, but a lesson I keep learning is there's so little we actually control.
We control the things we try.
We control what kind of salt we put in the pastry - never granulated, as I now know.
We control the people we invite into our lives.
The time we spend with them.
The time they spend with our dog.
We control our level of discomfort when the ones we love don't do the things they say they're going to do.
We control our own actions when we know this isn't enough.
We can leave.
We can quit.
We can say more, thank you.
We can cry in the morning when our love looks up at us with slimy ghee covered hands because that is how he says he loves her...and she is an extension of us...
and we can acknowledge that we've never been loved like that,
until now.
Gosh I hope you are doing well, my darlings, and if you’re not I hope there is small reprieves, and daily delights.
Since last time i’ve been…
Reading the new Emily Henry and Mhairi McFarlane and I’ve just begun Kimberly Allsop’s new one, Rise and Shine. I’ve been making theatre with brilliant young people and editing my young adult novel. I’ve been watching Task Master and Alone Australia and the this song is my latest hyper fixation song:
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It’s the flutes. Who knew I was a demon for flirty flutes.
Love Claire.
Thank you for reading and being here, my loves, you can support me and my words (and actions) if you fancy.
Or if you feel like someone would enjoy, please share my words.
Pearler is written and created on the unceded lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin and I pay my deep respect to First Nation Elders past and present. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.
I don’t believe I can wholeheartedly support sovereignty of this land I live, love and work on without acknowledging the liberation of Palestine and honoring the impacts of colonisation of Indigenous people everywhere else.