Category: Small Happinesses

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact day the decision was made. I imagine it was the result of a series of micro-aggressions from our lawnmower- refusals to start, deciding to faint when there was on a tiny patch more to mow, an inability to cope with anything slightly fibrous or stringey- that got us asking. ‘Why are we doing this?’.

We could all think of a thousand other things we’d rather be doing than mowing lawns. Most of the year, they were too wet to sit on. We protected them, even though we weren’t sure why. Enough was enough. We were rebelling. No more lawns.

I admit this decision was made easy by the fact my husband is a green thumb. I am a forest admirer, whilst he is a forest grower. All things of the soil flourish under his watch. Our previously pesky back lawn is now a jungle. But it is the front lawn l want to speak of for today. And more specifically, the grass.

Once we stepped back and let things grow, it was naturally, the grass that first took over. In the beginning, a thick blanket of green, but as it got higher and higher, it became a mini-meadow. And let me tell you what this proliferation has lead to: it’s the ingredients for butterflies and birds.

To step within the bounds of my previously boring lawn these days is to release a flurry of confetti made of wings. Small birds rise up by the handfuls, only moments before hidden within the stalks and seedheads.

I find myself staring out the kitchen window, watching the tiniest of bird’s balance on the end of a single strand of grass and marveling how they both don’t keel over.

I read the other day how small birds can lose almost half of their body weight in a night when there are storms and love how our garden is now a thicket of protection for tiny bodies, needing somewhere to shelter.

It’s also got me thinking about weeds, and how a weed is only a weed because of context, and our thoughts of good and bad. And how with all our mowing and all our grazing there are fewer and fewer places for little lives that needs long grass and safe meadows to nest and rest and frolic and shelter.

Which makes me look at our long and wild grass now and feel pleased.

My #11 Happiness is long grass and rediscovered meadows.

If I am very, very lucky, at around 5 or 6 pm, a little ding sings out of my phone. This happened yesterday. The Insomnias. I have to say, I am delighted.

The Insomnias have come to be one of my most favourite things. Perhaps I should tell you more about them.

For context, let’s begin with this:

Many of my most loved people live far away from me. They’re in time zones that are pesky for proper conversation- one is alive and frisky while the others in a coma- so friendships are conducted via an energetic and loving ping pong of voice messages long enough for podcasts collected when each respective party is awake.

Of course, it’s not that I wish sleepless nights upon my friends, but should they happen, then I consider what I’m providing is a service. A Dial A Friend hotline for when all available ears close to you are snoring and asleep.

One of my dearests, Tania, lives in Scotland and occasionally falls into The Insomnias. She is very, very smart and I imagine ideas and inspiration speed around her insides like a fast-flowing river so it’s no wonder wakefulness besets her.

Who can keep such magnificence inside a sleeping body? That peppiness needs some open eyes!

Whatever the opposite of small talk is is what Tania and I do. Is that Big Talk? When The Insomnias come on, Tania will ring me, and we will do the Big Talk. She, in her little house in Scotland, and me in New Zealand, tidying up the end parts of the day.

The Big Talk covers mountains and universes and all the things and is like a creative workout. We’ve Big Talked so much that we’ve mutually decided that most probably human happiness depends on it.

That we’re designed for the Big Talk, to work our idea muscles out, to unknot something gritty through shared and robust conversation.

The Big Talk, of course, includes the Small Talk. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to unleash my Mabel*’, we might say, or ‘I have to have a whinge’ and then two minutes later we’ve moved on to Quantum Theory and does that help us feel better about death and good lord aren’t we lucky to have a life full of interesting things and I’m not sure if you can hear that bird but they’re really astonishingly loud.

I recommend the Big Talk when you can.

xx Jane

*Mabel is the name Tania gives her alter-ego wots a little grumpy.

At the moment, my two main steeds wot live within my paddocks are the solid, chunky type. Ada, who is young and not yet under saddle, is an Irish Draught, and if you don’t know anything about horses, they are a big ones.

Someone said to me once, ‘Gosh, when she’s all grown up she’ll be big enough to run a township over’ and I said ‘Yes!’ in such a thrilled, delighted tone that I had to add a cough and a disclaimer.

‘I mean, not that I’d ever do that’.

Although I consider myself a good person, I do love riding a horse I can capture kingdoms on. I’m also quite attracted to the idea of jousting, although riding around with a big stick does seem awkward, especially when you have to open gates, or your nose gets itchy, or you think you might like to stop to take a photo of something.

Anyway, I’ve gone a little off course because today’s happiness is actually about my dogs. Or, if we’re more specific, my dogs and horse as a glorious combination. You see, as I ride my patchy pony, Merc, around the farm, my dogs track right round with me.

There is Lupin, big as a wolf who lopes with a stride that appears to have no start nor end. A cyclic, fluid movement that’s easy on the eye.

And then there’s Frankie, who is not so stylish in her run but really terribly cute, and that counts for a whole lot.

Sometimes, they run behind me. Sometimes they’re at my side. And my absolute favourite is when the sun catches all of us and I see us a unit moving forward as four shadows, the subjects of our self-appointed Kingdom.

Where shall we ride today?, I ask them and we canter off together.

And the good people cheer and shriek and clap their hands for all to hear. FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM! I hear them cry. FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM!

My #9 Happinesses in my Kingdom

We have a greenhouse that is full up with tomatoes. You walk in to a chandelier of leaves. But it’s the smell you notice first. A very specific tomato-ey smell that is not just tomatoes themselves, but a combination of soil and water and vegetal freshness that’s enlivening and luscious.

I heard a philosopher & psychiatrist speak once about our feelings. He said that there were many feelings we experience that don’t have names because they’re so specific to a moment, a situation, a relationship. They’re completely their own thing. Particular and un-nameable. A little bit mysterious. This smell is something like that. The greenhouse is completely her own universe.

The last few days I’ve been home all by myself and I’ve had jobs to do that aren’t usually on my list. Watering the tomatoes has been one of them. I water and chat and listen as liquid meets earth and the soil wakes up and the plants titter amongst themselves and drink and are delighted.

And I balance on one leg and reach for the cherry baubles that roll off under my thumb, and they explode with a goodness that only fresh tomatoes can in the euphoria of completing their earthly mission.

It’s feels so satisfying and right and comforting somehow to grow and tend and eat in a way where each bite is understood as a tiny miracle. Subversive somehow.

A revolution inside of a tomato.

As you may have guessed, tomatoes are my #8 Small Happiness.

The other day, I was talking with my dear friend Tania about bodies, and faces, and in this instance, someone’s legs.

‘I mean, they were lovely legs’, I found myself saying, ‘but I know what it most likely takes to have a pair of pins like that and the simple truth is I can’t be bothered’.

As I said those words, I found myself delighted.

I’ve spent a good many years being really not very nice to this body of mine. And because she only wants what’s best for me, she’s done her best to help.

We’ve restricted or been weird about our food and overdone the exercise.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to control our sometimes out-of-control-world (especially when we were little) by being quite unkind to this glorious, irregular, human shaped skin we move through the world in.

And I tell you, if there’s one thing that kind of behaviour quickly becomes is massively, profusely, spectacularly boring. And because ‘boring’ and ‘flaccid’ are two descriptors I’m morbidly afraid of being attached to my person, I must wholeheartedly commit myself to reject such monstrosities from my life.

I will say that I am very, very cross with The People Wot Have Planted Ridiculous Ideas About Bodies in our heads. This is one hundred trillion percent their fault, and I would very much like to have words.

But today’s post is not about them, because they are annoying. This is a Happiness post, so instead we are going to focus on this:

I can see all of my imperfections, and I am truly growing to love them. I don’t mean this in a saccharine kind of way. I still have to throw out the voices in my head that try to convince me that this body of mine is something to be fixed. What I am grateful for is the felt knowledge she is not.

And I know that instead of reading or talking about jean size and measurements and skin firming creams, I want to talk about art and writing, and that excellent book you read, and how the tree in your garden is starting to change her leaves, and those birds that you see every morning who’ve become so familiar they feel like friends.

And when we see the cake and all the things that looks delicious, we look at each other and say, shall we?!

It’s not that we don’t take care and nourish ourselves and move in the ways we need to. It’s that we don’t fall into the trap of endless improvement of something that is glorious as she is.

Something I’ve learned:

When a body goes into a state of survival, her lungs drop down to wrap around her heart, an embrace of protection. Then, her rib cage forms moves in and around her organs like a shell, a movement towards, not away from, life.

How can you not love a body like that?

Well, we won’t even entertain it.

Today’s #7 Small Happiness is this body.

I have a patchy horse called Merc who is a truly excellent person. Today’s Small Happiness could be about him alone- after all, what better happiness is there than to have horses grazing in your paddock- but instead we shall discuss how Merc scooped me up and carried me right through a magic portal.

Let me paint for you the picture. The day was sunny and I decided that we would ride around the farm. There’s a field down the back that we refer to as The Flats. It’s not completely flat, but it’s flatter than all the fields around, which are hilly and quite bumpy, and because we are creative, that is how she got her name.

For the most part, the ground underfoot is greasy and we mainly walk around, but today, it was dry enough to frolic.

We trotted here, and cantered there, making loops and swirls of no particular design and I found I was transported. I used to ride on grass when I was little, a feisty girl who played a lot with horses.

At the shows I attended, a world that feels both distant and quite close in a way something old but familiar does, we would ponce and strut and I would be the Proudest Girl In The World as I rode my horse.

My body flooded with the feeling. My whole being rearranged herself to bring forward Little Me from a different place and time.

And I was reminded, of all the people that we carry round inside us. Different versions of ourselves stacked up like tiny dolls, released a constellation of feelings or sounds or smells that fill the air like a strong and intoxicating perfume.

I rode and the Little Me with me. Enjoying the sun and our horse, and all of those we’d loved who’d come before.

My #6 Small Happinesses is to welcome and unexpected memories.

I’m of the personality type where it’s very easy for me to be a hermit. My closest friends live far away overseas, my work all happens from home, and I’m happy pottering and pootling and tittering to the birds outside my window.

Because I live out of town, to come into contact with another human for the most part has to be intentional.

I need to ‘make arrangements’, to take myself off somewhere, to place myself in the flow of human action that I’m unlikely to stumble across at home.

I was recently talking to someone about this:

What I miss are the kitchen table conversations, where nothing is arranged, but your community, those you love, will drop in and talk about nothing in particular.

I miss my couch friends, I say, where I can collapse on their sofa and not have to be anything but myself and anything around that is ok.

About a year ago, my husband brought home a little leaflet from town that listed a few art workshops. ‘I think you would be into these’, he said, and I nodded. He was right.

I have become something of an addict and a groupie in the best possible way, learning from some truly tremendous people all sorts of arts and making that are both sustaining and delightful.

I have found myself part of a community of interesting, intelligent, kind people. Kate, who owns the studio, is a natural Bringer Togetherer. She draws you in. Generosity and inclusiveness beam out of her.

The other night, we had dinner together and hashed out a few plans for some shared workshops. We sat around and ate some food, tinkered with ideas and consider what we could work on in the future.

In this crazy, modern world of ours, where we are all pulled into our individual streams, being in community takes effort.

It often takes a punt, a risk, a placing yourself somewhere you haven’t been before with the possibility of being very awkward. It might take a few goes but keep going.

It’s peopley out there but the lovely Humans Beans are really worth it. I’ve discovered for myself that this is true.

My little art community are my #5 Small Happinesses.

(I really love my online community too but I’ll save that for a different post and day)

The other day, I was talking to a friend who reminded me of the sacredness that exists in the mundane.

She sent me a quote from a book she was reading:

“Revel in the repetition,” it said. “Love is built through it”.

In a culture of creative practice that has convinced us we must feel endlessly and constantly inspired we must revel in the simplicity of repetition.  We must understand it, perhaps, as the key to keeping on. To embrace that love is built through it.

A completely different friend was describing to me something similar.

‘I don’t always feel like writing,’ she said, ‘and yet I do write every day. I am the work horse, putting on my harness to plough the field. I do this regardless of the weather, because this is a practice I have chosen and there is beauty is continuing through the parts that don’t feel brilliant.’

‘In fact,’ she added, ‘these are the exact conditions needed for brilliance to occur. I show up for what’s needed and get to work.’

There’s another piece I want to add:

I think that this whole “showing up” business is how we make ourselves available for creative collaboration. Not with another human (although that may for some of us be the case) but –**gestures to the world that is out there**– with whatever that energy is that infuses our thoughts.

Take, for instance, the amazing Dahlia that’s popped up in my garden. She is, without a doubt, a co-conspirator. I imagine her petals as skirts, adorning my own body and in my mind, I skim across the floor, and I am twirling.

Us humans frequently forget that our creative selves are rarely the consequence of us alone, but more often, as I read recently ‘an intimate and passionate negotiation and co-authoring with our animal and vegetal collaborators.’

We are a braided river with the world, and if we are lucky, things pop up in our path that cause us to remember and to notice.

The Dahlia is my #4 Small Happinesses, for the majesty and beauty she brings the world, and for my eyes that pause long enough to see it.

When Frankie was a very tiny puppy, she quickly figured out how to take herself off on adventures. In the beginning, we were slightly baffled as to how she was doing it- the height from the veranda to the ground is very high- but then we discovered she would abseil.

Supported by the dense foliage, she would squeeze her way through the wooden rails and allow the leaves and branches to support her as she scrambled her way down.

Having secured the area, things were quiet for a time. That is, until they weren’t.

At first, I blamed my husband for letting the dogs out at inconvenient times. Then, he blamed me. Then, we blamed the kids. Until we realized that together, the big dog person body of a German Shepherd and the little but big thinking dog person body of a Border Terrier, could collapse a weaker part of the fence and find their way out.

Yesterday, G had been out and just come home, and I had been teaching a workshop, and he came in just as I wrapped up. He was holding our smallest Dog Person.

If they were feeling guilty, there was nothing to show for it.

“I found her at the top of the driveway,” he tut-tutted.

I made the sound of shock.

“She was sitting in the orchard eating the apples”.

I’m afraid I can’t escape the vision: My Apple Eating Person Dog is today’s Small Happiness.

xx Jane

PS. For those wondering they are “locked up” on the deck for approximately 2-3 minutes per day, which Frankie finds quite inhumane. She also likes watermelon. Basically, anything edible and quite a lot not. The weak part of the fence has been restored.