I Am Here, Right Now

How are you? How are you in this holiday season? What tiny moments of joy were you able to squirrel away to remember and delight on later?

We are now in that liminal space, the week between Christmas (for those who observe it) and the New Year. It is that odd, not-quite-a-holiday vibe. I don't know about you, but this time can feel quite disconnected to me, like there is a heavy sense of waiting for something. A wading through, a walking through, a threshold.

That focus on what is coming up (or not coming up) means I am not connecting to the present. If I don't choose to be present, it becomes too easy a habit, and I find myself repeating those routines of disconnect to the world around me that was a part of my daily life for many, many years. It did not serve me well. And so I am choosing to be intentional today.

This day is just as important as the next day, and the next day, no matter what the calendar says is attributed to that particular rise and fall of the sun. It is no more in-between than it is important and to be celebrated. Today is the 28th December, and I know there are a myriad of things between now and what is the beginning of 2022, but today is where my mortal body is, grounded in this moment if I choose, stepping through this day, this right now.

This right now.

This right now, with the blessedly cooler temperatures (after a fortnight of heat and humidity). The light rain. The not-at-all pretty sounds of baby galahs asking for food and being fed in my yard (but oh their sweet wide-eyed faces, and desaturated pink feathers). Stop. Close my eyes. Breathe in. Right now there are doves cooing, the distant sound of a currawong, the ever hopeful male koel wooing it sounds like two females. I can hear water running down the gutter. I have sandalwood incense burning, it smells wonderful, and there is a slight scent of rain under that. Green. I am sipping pure peppermint tea eagerly, although the water is really too hot right now. I blow the surface of the tea to cool it down a little, the peppermint scent intensifies and I feel my own breath bounce back to the tip of my nose as it skims across the tea.

There is a light breeze through my window, and it is lightly caressing my sunburnt arms (too much time in the pool in the hot Australian sun), and it feels so wonderful. I have some beeswax lotion with lavender on my burnt sienna coloured arms, made by my mum from the bees she and my dad care for ethically and sustainably and with respect and reciprocity. I have the hard work of thousands of tiny souls soothing my arms, and being kissed by breezes that have floated over and through trees for many, many kilometres.

The neighbourhood is blissfully quite, and I am present now - describing all of this to you is calming, and centring, and I am here, right now.

I am here right now.

28th December 2021