Arrangements in Blue

Love is transformative, but it doesn't make sense to wait for romantic love to do the work of happiness for you.

Perhaps that's why art in all its forms can feel like the purest expression of one soul to another. A means of transcending the boundaried self. It turns out Joni's Blue is the case of wine I can drink and still remain standing. Her Blue pours out of me, not in a way she might recognise or even find at all touching, but it's there, nevertheless. The soul forever pouring from one to another, making something new through art.

Even though I don't believe in a god, I still feel I am in touch with something beyond myself. Sometimes it's an occurence timed with such ingenuity it feels cosmic. Like the gift of the piano. Other times, it's a sense of profound connection. One morning my cat settled on the pillow just above my head. It's always my desire for her to do this, but most often she does not; she lies between my legs, or on my hip, and after some minutes I feel the need to move, and she slopes away. But that particular morning she settled and inched her face forward until her cheek rested on my own. It felt like a connection beyond offering her the soft warmth of my body, a cosy place for her to nap. It felt like she was giving herself to me for my comfort alone, letting me lean on her. I felt the friendship of a cat and it touched me. Even though I could easily rathionalise the comfort out of it, I let it be taken as I needed to in that moment. My soul needs signs and symbols, not logic.

I deserve to dream a good dream of the future. I've stopped waiting for it to begin.

Self-love has to include a disregard for how other people might perceive me, and living as though life is in the present, rather than something that will start in earnest once certain thresholds have been passed. I sometimes have to say aloud to myself: you do not agree that life's worth should be measured in this way. Don't give the idea the authority to direct your self-criticism for not measuring up. It feels like a life's work. Repeat it until you mean it. Say it like a friend would.

I hoped newness might knock grief clean out of me.

This is where I was, this is where I am. And then to think towards an imagined future — this is where I now go. It struck me that this type of reflection, this assigning of importance to one's own journey through life, is a kind of love.

Sometimes my soul feels very peaceful, happy to be contained. Other times it has the urge to send envoys into the world, and I find myself sending unguarded passionate messages, voice notes and even recordings of me singing to my friends. It makes me think of the bit in the song where Joni breaks into the Canadian national anthem. I find the whole song moving, but this particular part, her 'o Canada', sounds like a moment where she forgets the audience and performs in the way you might in a private scene with a lover, family member or friend. No one wants to be a lonely soul, only filled up with yourself and the abstractions of the soul in art. Like a squid stuffed with its own tentacles. A lonely painter, living in a box of paints. But, it occurs to me, needing to identify what or who the 'you' is when I sing Joni's song is another example of my ego troubling with a convention I don't really believe in. My 'you' could be liquid, flowing from one thing to another. It could contain many people and things, be so vast as to be God-sized, an oceanic you. Or it could be small and exact like a square of pure pigment, with a startling itselfness, which once it goes beyond me can transform all it touches.

Finding the sweet spot between gently pushing yourself to do things that could be wonderful and allowing yourself to do absolutely nothing takes work and practice. A holiday should include a break from self-punishment, as well as a break from work and the expectations of others.

Happiness is something that I cannot always summon, it’s more like a butterfly landing on me briefly.