I live alone, with an old dog and a loving cat in a busy house. 

It is busy. It has areas to paint, areas to cook, areas to dream, to sit, to sleep, to build, to dance… because those are all things I do. 

I always felt my roots were scattered. Rather than be rootless, I grab them and spread them about me like a skirt. I want to imbue some grace in what surrounds me, an art of living. If the opposite to sterile is bacterial, then my world is bacterial, then, my house is teeming with bacteria. 

In the past few years I often reflected on the benefits of routine. Routine has a way to help mark time and reduce the effort of trying to make decisions. This was helpful when I was very depressed a few years ago. This is useful when I clock in and out of a dreary world that provides me with income and (bizarrely) with a structure that might just be beneficial to my wild soul and provides financial stability to my life at long last. Routine is rather dull and boring. It not magical, it is not wild, it is not spiritual, not intentional. Rituals are. 

So I split my life along two axes. One has (some) routine, and the other has rituals: A cup of tea or coffee should never taste exactly the same but provide an experience to savour and delight in. This sense of magic, sensory nourishment and pursuit of quirky beauty exists in the ordinary stream of a day’s seconds, minutes, hours. In a life.  That viewfinder to the world is a portal. 

And this blog is just another piece of the puzzle of my busy house.