He sends me a an email saying: ‘I am missing you terribly.’
Well, yes. I can imagine he is missing me. But nothing changes if nothing changes.
So I write back and say: ‘I am missing you too. Take care of yourself.’
It is like waving at one another in the dark, invisible gestures across an ocean or two. Continents meandering adrift and ships passing without signals, all that kind of thing.
‘What is it with men?’ I think, perhaps unfairly. Then I go out and plant basil seeds for the dark moon. There are quarts of freshly squeezed organic lemon juice staning on the counter in huge ungainly jugs, waiting to be made into lemonade. The scrubbed basin is filled with salty water in which I am soaking and cleaning waterblommetjies, the green and cream-coloured buds of a flowering water plant to be made into a silky casserole, a local delicacy using an old Dutch recipe.
The Great Mother has work in plenty for her daughters who want to stay earth-connected. I must get courgettes and butternuts into the patch of turned earth near the washing lines. I need to transplant seedlings of parsley and tomato into a sunnier place against a sheltering wall. I must cut back the rosemary bushes at the far end of the garden.
There is a little cat, loved by his owners but impudently turning feral, who comes into the garden and suns himself with eyes squeezed shut, rolling in the sand under a lavender bush. Animals don’t need us the way we need them. And some of them want their wilder natures back at all costs. I observe him with passionate interest.
There are books piled high on my table in the study, that old dented table with its satiny 18th-century yellowwood patina, piles of novels for review. I am busy rereading all the novels of Penelope Fitzgerald, lovingly and in awe of her ability to write from the inside.
Lengthening my morning meditations too, sitting there in the chill and darkness, just feeling the heartache and accepting this is how it must be for now. A bleak wisdom of presence. Thinking of the retreat and planning to cut out daily coffee in readiness. Perhaps thermos jugs of hot water, spiced with grated ginger sweetened with a little honey. Something with kick.
Getting ready to go out for lunch — unexciting food but the pleasure of being with friends. Then some writing in the afternoon and an evening of chatting with my housemate and sorting washing together, watching television. A meditation at the end of the day, reflecting, listening, staying open..
Ordinary common-or-garden witchy stuff. Ordinary human stuff. Just getting on with it. Attunement. Self-acceptance. The messy life work of loving and loss and stirring unrefined sugar into bitter lemon juice and tending a garden and earning a living and doing no harm.
So I say to myself ‘What is it with men anyway?’ and make myself another mug of calming green tea.
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