Releasing and moving on (continued)

Maybe the house is resisting releasing me. I’ve tried to reassure it, tried to convince it the next owners will love it as I do. Perhaps it senses my uncertainty about this.

Is it too much to hope for the ‘perfect’ buyer? Someone who will enjoy the house and environment for what it is and not merely see it as an ‘investment’, something to be manipulated for profit. There are such people around, but is it then too much to hope that such a buyer would also have enough money at their disposal to pay us a fair price.

Last week we signed another contract, for much less than we’d been hoping for, and much less than the earlier contract. There’s no doubt the market has been dropping, and we are more anxious to sell quickly than we were 3 months ago. So we were reconciled to a lower price, though probably not this much lower. What we weren’t prepared for was that the new buyer, just like the last, would try to reduce the price drastically once the contract had been signed, over perceived flaws which should have been accepted as part and parcel of an old house. After all, you don’t go into a used furniture store and demand the price of recovering be deducted from the selling price of an obviously used sofa.

Part of the problem lies in current real estate practice in these parts. There seems to be a determination on the part of agents to keep buyers and sellers apart, thereby depersonalising them and casting them in the roles of adversaries. I have an uncomfortable feeling of having my space desecrated … my home, which reflects me, is open for all to see, but I know little or nothing about these people who wish to take over my home. People who, the agent tells us, are absolutely in love with the house … yet expect it to cost no more than other places they’ve seen which they like much less.

Maybe I’m unusual, but I’ve come to expect to pay more for things I consider superior.

I’m tired of all this game-playing. If I leave feeling I’ve been screwed I’ll leave bad vibes behind … not that I mean to, but I’m human after all.

At this moment, I just want it all to be over.

The coming week will tell. There are a couple of other contenders who seem to be prepared to pay a better price, but after 2 failed contracts I’m not exactly filled with confidence.

Would someone like to pray to the patron saint of house-selling for me?

Releasing and moving on

A time comes when you just have to let go … when the pain of holding on exceeds the pain of releasing and leaving behind.

It happens with things (all those books I’ve accumulated over a lifetime, for instance); it happens with people (once dear friends with whom I’ve somehow lost contact); and it happens with places.

This is a tale about place.

We’ve lived in this house for over 16 years. It was a small, modest, 1930s workers’ cottage when we moved in. As soon as possible, my husband added a front and back verandah (carefully accommodating the resident white wisteria). He also added another room, opening onto both verandahs, which served as my office and studio. In the small back yard we cultivated a rainforest garden and trained the wisteria to climb over a pergola. The back verandah became our favourite place … a haven from which to marvel at the seasons, the play of sunlight through leaves, the birds and wildlife that frequently came calling.

I’ve loved living in this place. It’s a leafy sanctuary in the midst of suburbia, just 6km from the Brisbane CBD. Sit on the back verandah and you’re unaware you’re just a few allotments away from a major road and public transport to the City. Four beloved cats lie buried beneath its soil … animal lovers will understand when I say that gives it the feel of ‘sacred ground’.

But the time has come to move on. I realised this, with a jolt, about 4 months ago. We’d thought about moving a number of times over the past few years, but each time opted to stay where we were. On this occasion it was different … a sudden knowing that the time was right.

The reasons are several:

-  Our son returned to live with us some years ago and I gave up my art store-room to give him a place to sleep. As a result, my studio became so crammed with stuff that there’s no space to work.

-  The house is really too small for 3 adults, all of whom need work areas and who value their privacy and like to play their music without headphones.

-  Having fallen upon difficult times, paying a too-high mortgage has become too great a burden. Selling the house and renting for a while would give us a long overdue respite from financial concerns.

-  We also just need a ‘change’. I have a yen to be near the sea and we feel drawn to the Redcliffe area.

So, after a neighbour’s house sold for far more than we would have expected, we decided to put the house on the market.

But first we had to ‘declutter’.

We collect things – books mostly, and information of all kinds. Other stuff too. Let’s focus on the books. When we moved to Brisbane from Buderim in ’87 we brought with us 129 boxes of books. There followed 6 moves in 7 years, before we bought this house. The moves whittled away at the books and when we came here we were down to 70 boxes. But we’ve been here 16+ years …  need I say more.

Added to the books are all my art materials. Photography used to be my main interest, but now I’m into artist books, collage, doll-making, jewellery, painting, print-making, and other things that don’t immediately come to mind. I’ve accumulated a vast store of unusual materials which you can’t just buy in a store, so I can’t throw or give them away, can I.

With quite remarkable discipline for a person so self-indulgent, I managed to fill 10 give-away boxes. The rest I began packing away in boxes to store under the house in preparation for The Move … just to show the Universe that I’m serious about this.

The house looks slightly uncluttered. The wonder is that all that other stuff fitted in without our constantly stumbling over it. Those who give advice on selling houses would undoubtedly recommend moving out at least 50% of what remains. But I say it looks like an artist’s house, and besides, we have to live and work here till the house sells, so putting everything away is impractical.

The decluttering took a month. Then the house was advertised and the routine of Open Houses began, along with the ongoing task of keeping the place presentable … not easy when you have two of the world’s most creative messers on board. After a false start with an agent who managed to attract only 4 groups of people to 3 Open Days, we changed to another who has been much more successful – so much more successful, in fact, that you wonder what the first agents do with their time.

Three weeks ago we signed a contract, which seemed iron-clad, but fell over in circumstances which almost made us lose faith in the human race, or at least that part of it labelled Buyers.

I’m tired of Open Houses, and I’m especially tired of house-cleaning. I’m almost tired of buying flowers. There’s a lot of interest, so I suppose eventually the ‘right’ buyer will turn up.

I’m impatient though. Having ‘released’ the house I want to move soon, before I start to cry. I want to move to Redcliffe now, and walk daily on the beach searching for interesting stones to add to my collection of Intriguing Things I might use in an Artwork Some Day.

You can check out the house at:

http://www.eplace.com.au/property.cfm?propertyID=1429737&realestate=45_Leiper_Street_STAFFORD_QLD_4053

While we’ve been waiting, the wisteria has bloomed again, the nasturtiums almost finished their annual bid to take over the back yard, and the jacaranda in front of the house is bursting into bloom.

Somewhere out there is the perfect new owner for our house … one who will continue to love it as we do, and give it a fresh lease of life.

In memory of Paddington

When she learned Paddington had died, our neighbour said, “He was a cat with charisma, a true character”.

I didn’t realise I’d miss him so much. Paddington was the only cat, out of the 7 we’ve had during our married life, who preferred my husband to me. He immediately made it clear that my husband’s office was his favourite place in the house. He was very fond of my son too, so I guess he was a man’s cat. It wasn’t that he didn’t like me – he clearly did – but I wasn’t his first choice.

So I was surprised to find myself crying inconsolably for a whole day after finding him dead under a neighbour’s steps. Two weeks later, I’m still putting fresh flowers on his grave.

Paddington's grave under the wisteria

Much of Paddington’s life was shrouded in mystery. He came into our lives 9 years ago, after our diminutive Siamese, Dipity, died. Our second cat, a Tonkinese called Kasha, mourned loudly for weeks so we thought we’d better find her a companion. Our vet offered us Paddington. He thought he was around 4 years old.

He had been found on a road in Paddington (Brisbane), after being hit by a car. He had two broken hips and a broken leg. The vet repaired him, but nobody claimed him.

So Paddington came into our household. He settled in quickly, and though he wasn’t the cuddle-cat Kasha wanted, they became firm friends.

Checking out the burrs on Kasha's tail

We were accustomed to small, female Siamese-style cats who talked loudly and often. Paddington was male, large, probably part Siamese and part Birman. He had a small, charming voice and rarely spoke … usually just to say ‘thankyou’ when we gave him something to eat which he particularly liked. He ate a lot.

It became clear almost immediately that Paddington could not be ‘owned’ by anyone. Before he was properly recovered from his injuries, or the fur had regrown over his hind quarters, he set about meeting everyone in the neighbourhood. He visited whoever would allow him in and soon had his favourites who let him choose a special chair for himself in their homes. He visited regularly, for about an hour, then moved on to the next on his list. He also established himself as ‘boss cat’ of the neighbourhood and had an ongoing battle/game with Proper, the cat next door .

He made enemies of the street bully people, but was never intimidated by them. When they shouted and threw things at him he ambled out of their property in what was to become his characteristic measured gait, and stopped every few steps to look back at them in disdain.

But most people just loved him. Even the bully people eventually stopped shouting at him. He knew more about the people in the neighbourhood than the rest of us put together.

He sat out in the street in the afternoons waiting to greet people as they came home from work. He found those who most needed love … the old, the lonely, and most of all, the children. There aren’t many children in our street, and we didn’t realise till too late how attached he had become to the children who lived on the corner.

He had a secret life.

Just over 2 weeks ago we learned he had been regularly visiting these children. It seems they had become his second family.

As he grew older, he spent more of the daytime in our garden and house, but he became more and more difficult to confine at night. He prowled the house in search of a window or door one of us had forgotten to close. We now realise that he accepted us as his ‘day family’ but he wanted to spend the nights with the children.

A couple of months ago, however, the children’s mother put their house on the market, and the children were often absent … staying, presumably, with their father. Paddington had become rather edgy, desperately trying to get out at night and becoming angry when we kept him in.

On the day the family finally vacated the house, Paddington went missing.

We searched for him for nearly a week, and put posters up all over the neighbourhood. Then one awful Saturday morning I got a phone call.  The children had returned with a man I presume was their father to clear out the rest of their stuff. They saw our poster, then found Paddington dead under their steps.

We all cried together.

My husband and son were away and I couldn’t contact them. I spent the day crying and putting all Paddington’s photos together in an album on my computer. The next day we buried him under  the white wisteria (which is starting to flower), surrounded by nasturtiums. Each year, when the wisteria blooms, we will remember him.

I will miss so much:

• the way he sometimes liked us to pick him up and carry him up the stairs, with his head tucked under our chin
• the abandoned way he stretched on his back (see photo below)
• seeing him curled up in a too-small box (marked ‘uncategorised’) in my husband’s office
• hearing his little thankyou ‘meep’ when I fed him
• the way he ran excitedly up the stairs when we returned from the supermarket (he knew we would have new food for him)
• hearing Kasha complainingly telling him not to play so rough
• feeling him beside my feet on the mat when I did Qi Gong in the mornings in the garden
• the way he loved to be kissed on the forehead
• his patience as he sat for ages beside his plate in the kitchen, confident that someone would come to feed him … sometimes we wouldn’t realise he was there waiting, and after a while he would come silently into my office and I would feel a nose gently touch my leg, followed by his signature ‘meep’
• the way he would rush at Colin’s closed office door and reach up towards the handle
• the way he kissed Kasha on the nose whenever he came home

… and a multitude of other gestures that were his alone.

Farewell Paddington. If there is a cat heaven, it is now a more interesting place because of you.

Paddington of the direct clear gaze

He sometimes loved to be carried

Live life - the uninhibited Paddington

Art, spirituality, transformation and healing

Years ago (too many for me to want to count) I came across a book called How to Meditate without Leaving the World by Avery Brooke. I can’t remember much about the rest of the book, but the first exercise made a big impact on me. Simple and absorbing, it involved spending ten or so minutes observing a natural object, faithfully recording the details, then spending some time in quiet contemplation until an insight arose.

Eager to try it, I went outside and picked a stem of grass, one that had offshoots from the main stem. I became totally engrossed in my observation and started to notice things I’d never consciously seen before. There were thorn-like growths where the new leaves emerged from the stem, but as the leaves grew bigger, the ‘thorns’ grew smaller.

A light bulb went on in my brain … that wonderful ‘aha’ experience that comes with a flash of insight. My son was about four years old at the time and beginning to get rather adventurous. Like most mothers, I was a little over-protective. The grass shoots taught me that, as my son grew, my protectiveness needed to diminish.

Someone once said that everything you need to know about life can be learned from nature. I believe it. And why not … all creatures share the same Spirit.

Later, when I encountered the work of Betty Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain) and Frederick Franck (The Zen of Seeing: Drawing as Meditation), I combined some of their techniques with the simple nature exercise and developed a process which results in beautiful drawings and insightful writings. The drawing intensifies seeing, and opens the eyes of the soul.

This was my first experience of the transformative power of art. I use ‘art’ in the broad sense here, to include all the arts. Artistic skill is not necessary. All that is needed is a desire to discover and express what is in your heart.

I’d like some day to have a creative centre that focuses on the spiritual, transformative and healing power of all the arts … a place where people can learn to release their full potential through creativity. I’m not sure how it will unfold, but I’ve taken the first small steps.

On Sunday, 31 May, I shall present my first workshop on “How to Meditate without Leaving the World“. If you live in or near Brisbane (Australia) contact me at carmela.melisanda@gmail.com for details.

_______

Example

deep in my burgundy heart
a star shines
lighting my path

Creative spirit on vacation

I’m afraid my blog is not living up to its tagline. I’m not doing much to free my creative spirit these days. I’m too preoccupied with trying to make a living. How can I call myself an ‘artist’ when I rarely create any art? I don’t even know what art I want to create. There are just too many things to do, and I have too many interests, and I’m too disorganised … that’s a lot of ‘toos’.

I have a suspicion this is all avoidance tactics stemming from a fear of testing myself, and wanting the things I put out there to be perfect. I’m constantly warning others about the pitfalls of so-called perfection, but I don’t apply it to myself.

I’ll try to do better.

So how can I make this blog more meaningful, without spending too much time on it?

Why, post imperfect artworks of course. Let’s not even think of them as ‘artworks’ but  as exercises in freeing my creative spirit.

Here we are then—one of my analog drawings, which take almost no time to produce, but often tell me a lot. This one was drawn on one of my more orderly, self-contained days it would seem. I try not to ‘think’ while doing the drawings.

More about Aussie possums

It’s a long time since I’ve added a blog post. My small but ardent fan club has no doubt given up hope of ever hearing from me again. The past two years have been particularly challenging, and blog-writing fell by the wayside.

But now I’m back, with renewed energy.

What better way to restart than with the latest tales of Vera, our Verandah Possum.

Vera is now at least 4 years old, and has had several babies since Skydiver, one of which is with her now on a shelf in one of my art supplies cupboard, though not with my blessing! Yesterday I inadvertently left the door ajar in the evening, and this morning they had taken up residence in a small basket on the top shelf … first tossing out items they didn’t want! Vera hissed at me when I scolded her, but I shouted at her, telling her it was my cupboard, not hers. She shut up … and went back to sleep.

Until a few days ago, she was happy with her home on top of the cupboard, which she has occupied on and off since the days of Skydiver 1 (see earlier post). Current baby is aptly called Champion Skydiver, because he seems to love falling off the cupboard. After noticing that he was falling off 3-4 times a day, we came to suspect he does it on purpose. We’ve put cushions below, you see, so he has the thrill without any pain. Each time he falls, Vera gives him a tongue-lashing, but scrambles down to rescue him. He climbs on her back and then has a thrilling ride as she descends to the verandah, climbs up a post, then swings along a beam back to the top of the cupboard. Champion has to keep ducking to avoid hitting his head on the crossbeams.

Vera considering her options

The long journey back to the cupboard

Thinking we might make her life easier, when she went out at night my husband decided to attach some netting to the side of the cupboard so she could climb up instead of having to make the arduous journey along the beams. In so doing, he noticed that the top of the cupboard was in danger of caving in, so he attached a layer of thick cardboard.

Big mistake! She has avoided the top of the cupboard ever since. Doubtless she has ranted to her friends about ‘meddling humans’.

If she thinks she’s going to live inside the cupboard she can think again!

NOTE:  Apologies for imperfect exposures. Light was dim, and I didn’t want to upset Vera with a flash, as she was already stressed.

Spring Downunder

If I pretend Summer isn’t just around the corner, I love this time of year. Summer in Brisbane is sweltering, but the rest of the year (April to October) is delightful.

Sitting on the verandah, I am daily enchanted by the coming of Spring. The changes are not as dramatic as in the northern hemisphere (eg most trees don’t lose their leaves for the winter), so you need to watch more carefully. The garden is currently overflowing with birdsound and bee-buzzing and flittering butterflies, and the white wisteria explodes with fresh new leaves, pendulous flower bunches and explorative tentacles. That’s too many adjectives, I know, but surrounded as I am with such abundance I just couldn’t help myself.

More photos …

Trust the process

In recent months I’ve been suffering a serious case of artist’s block. My mind’s been buzzing with ideas, but as soon as I try to translate them into a piece of work I sit in indecision and frustration, surrounded by masses of materials and tools. My mind has been filled with negative thoughts: “What do I want to say?” “Who cares what I have to say anyway?” “Why would anyone want to buy the stuff I make? It’s nice enough, but hardly of the ‘must have’ variety.” And so on.

In the hopes of putting an end to this nonsense I enrolled in an online course called Creative Voice (http://www.centeredpath.com/CP/index.html)

Just to ensure that I remain time-challenged, I also enrolled in Barb Kobe’s Medicine Dolls course (http://www.barbkobe.com/index.html). Both courses run for 3 months. I told myself they would work well together, and I’m probably right … provided I apply myself and do all the exercises.

A little magic

If you’ve never encountered Xian Tao flower balls, go get yourself one at the earliest opportunity, even if you don’t like unusual teas.

Colin and I visited a new shopping complex last Saturday and stopped for tea and cake at the delightful Tlicious café (http://www.tlicious.com.au) . After reading the description, I simply had to buy one of the Xian Tao flower balls.

“Constructed by hand, these Xian Tao flower balls are a green tea with jasmine and a pink chrysanthemum centre. Place in a glass teapot or cup for best results. Pour in hot water and watch as a beautiful flower slowly unfolds.”

Sheer magic.

The tea was wonderful too.

Angel webs

Some people grow flowers in their garden. And vegetables and herbs and things. We grow cobwebs.

We grow some flowers – the nasturtiums that spring up and grow wild every winter for instance – but they’re not nearly so spectacular as the cobwebs.

I’m rather fond of the cobwebs and constantly marvel at their structure and the magical way they catch the light.