Pillow Book of Prudence …

Things that relax you… are the most perfect things in one’s life.  Eclectic things: waves shushing in and out, a light breeze blowing through the leaves of a tree, the sounds of snowy silence, a dog asleep under one’s hand. There are sinful things as well: chocolate, a good wine, even medication when one has a serious ache or pain. But then there is massage: preferably a Bowen massage, the pressure of kind fingers, ambient music playing just within earshot, warm towels being laid over one’s body.

Floating in ocean water: lying like a star, arms outstretched, ears below the waterline listening to the sound of the ocean.  A ticking sound, a buzzing sound… all from deep down through the layers of water from whatever creatures roam the depths beneath.  The ebb and flow of the tide lifts and releases, lifts and releases and one feels as a babe must, cocooned in safe arms.  Then there is solitude, peace, just the sound and feeling of one’s breath coming in, going out …

Things that don’t relax are the sound of jetskis and the people that feel obliged to destroy the peace of the surroundings.  I liken it to lying on a race track with a fleet of motorbikes charging around.  Throngs.  Of people.  Go to your homes, people. Stop clogging our wide open spaces. We can’t breathe and you don’t care as you leave your litter, despoiling our places. Too much socialising is also not relaxing for one like me who craves the solitary peace of a beach-cottage.  To be sure it is wonderful mingling, but I watch the second-hand of the clock the whole time. In addition, whilst I celebrated the hands of the clock passing midnight on December 31st because it opened the gates to a year that may be even more wonderful than the last, I also realised that this is the year I turn sixty and that is so not a relaxing thought …

In this first week of 2011, I wish for many things:  the health of my family, two members in particular. I wish for as wonderful a year meeting people through this blog and through Facebook and Twitter as I had last year. I wish that the fountain of youth could be discovered for our oldest sheepdog who is growing frailer by the day. I wish for happiness for those that I love.  And I wish for inspiration to keep my fingers typing the kinds of stories that people want to hear.

Strangely I also wish that grey, taupe or brown will be the new black, and that people will stop looking as if they are in perpetual mourning.  For as readers of this blog know, I have ever been disappointed by the masses who insist on wearing the colour of shadow. For me black is the colour of no imagination, it’s harsh and unforgiving … and this is not a world in which we should not forgive.  Perhaps then black is a lesson to me: ‘Forgive, Mesmered, forgive and forget.’