Unfurl.

This week I'm not working, which feels a bit like a limb is missing because I haven’t had purposeless (maybe rest oriented is a better word?) time off from my job in 1.5 years. I borrowed a friends car and drove down to Margaret River to see the waters that everyone raves about. Before we keep going, take a big full breath & loosen your jaw. I felt like I wasn’t present on the first day in Margs. Once you’ve travelled solo a few times and can get yourself to the local supermarket, broadsheet a good coffee and find a warm bed, the travel buzz dims slightly. But I was determined to have some sort of experience that felt cup-filling. An hour after arriving, laying on my air b&b bed scrolling through Etsy to find cushions for my new rental, I got up and decidedly strolled back to the car. It was 4pm and the sun was setting around 5:15 so I didn’t have particularly long to get settled on a rocky perch somewhere overlooking the big ball disappearing behind the horizon. I typed into maps ‘beach’ and drove to the first one that came up, it was called Redgate. I was one of only three cars there. One guy was eating fish and chips in his holden commodore and the other was a mother wrangling her toddler. I peeped my cold ankles out of the door and promptly zipped up my puffer jacket (that I wasn’t going to bring, foolish) then wandered over by the rocks to try to get a better view. I don’t want to lie to you and say that it was some transformative spiritual awakening moment because it wasn’t. But what did happen was awe. I couldn’t believe how large the rocks were off the shore, at least as big as an apartment. The water seemed to go on forever and the birds were trying to hard to fight against the wind to land on the cliff face. It wasn’t a godly moment where I discovered a new purpose for myself but I wanted to call my mum and show her. Then I called a few friends and showed them. I stayed there for about 2 hours. I took photos, put my hands in some of the rock pools, walked up the top of the hill, then I walked down. I got back in the car when it started raining, I got out again when the sky turned purple. It felt like what Celtic lore would call a 'thin place', somewhere were the veil between our tangible world and whatever is on the other side is less opaque. I didn’t sit there cross legged meditating and soaking up the moment, I just kind of moseyed around. But like I wrote about a few weeks ago, I don’t believe we can know how important something is at the same time that we’re experiencing it…that comes later. After I took a big deep breath of sea air and felt like it was time to leave, I headed back into town, had a meal at the pub and went to sleep in the bed with 11 pillows on it. I know the time was well-spent wandering around at Redgate, and that is wasn't 'important', just needed.

The next morning, I scrolled through Krista Tippett’s Spotify playlist 'On Being', and stopped at a random episode landing at an interview with two women who have recently translated Rainer Maria Rilke’s: Letter’s to a Young Poet. I’d heard the title before but I had no idea what it was about or who wrote it. The only thing I can remember is this scene out of Sister Act. Whoopi Goldberg says to a young Lauryn Hill’s character,

‘’I went to my mother who gave me this book.

Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.

A fabulous writer.

A fella wrote to him saying

"I wanna be a writer. Please read my stuff."

Rilke says to this guy, "Don't ask me about being a writer, "if when you wake up in the morning you can think of nothing

but writing, then you're a writer."

I'm gonna say the same thing to you.

If you wake up and you can't think of anything but singing first,

then you're supposed to be a singer girl.''

From 1902 - 1908, Rilke writes 10 letters in reply to a young cadet’s questions; they are about gender, love, war, poetry, writing, nature, ‘self’ and childhood. So, after beginning to read the letters, I’m now in the process of being reborn; or perhaps up-levelling. That’s how it feels sometimes doesn’t it? Every time you say no to something you don’t want to do, or make decisions for yourself, see new things, read new text, you are up-levelling yourself and how you live your life from that point on. Surrendering your life to ‘write’ (by write I mean whatever it is that Rilke would have said to you- singing, accounting, building, designing, dancing, engineering) isn’t always practical. Because we live in a world that demands for us to have steady incomes, systematic organisation of our daily lives and universally accepted goals. However, sometimes it can feel good to escape into the abyss of whatever our thing is. At the moment everything we do (at least for me) feels like it has to be a side hustle or a way to subsidise our income. People take photos and create things to get more followers. We post to convince others to be considerably more interested in our lives than any reasonable stranger would have been before social media existed. Which begs the question, if we were to choose to make with no purpose, what would we be doing it for? As Byles and Orland say in the book Art and Fear, ‘There is generally no good reason why others should care about most of anyones art work. The function is to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork soar.’ I think what they're saying here, is that it's not anyones job to like your work. They don't have to connect to it or want to participate in it, it's your job to become a craftsman of your art so that it can eventually transcend. I don't mean transcend in the sense of it becoming a hit and then suddenly you're famous, but that it will eventually transcend your short time on earth, and live long after you in the communal stream of consciousness. I can tell when I've written something special, and I can tell when I've written a fake. They're received so obviously differently but that's not important. I just have to keep writing because I feel I have to - as Rilke says, like you're the first (wo)man on earth and you're writing about what you see. Next month I'm moving to a small town to live on a piece of a family friends land, and I hope to be able to deliver you some words that inspire you to be become a craftsman of your own daily rituals. Or actually, I hope I can write the things that I need to hear. To encourage myself to live a life that is more concerned with wellbeing of self, other and planet. That's the thing about creating- by making something for yourself, you'll ultimately make something that betters the lives of others. What do I need to hear today? Drink more water. Napping in the afternoon isn't a waste of time.

Busy isn't a personality type. How about you spend less time thinking about your stomach fat and more time thinking about your muscle tension? GO TO YOGA. Eat that entire baguette. Unfurl a little more to the people you love. I think that's all I need to hear today. If when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but X first, then use it to your benefit...it will eventually benefit others. With Love, M

Image: Redgate beach, Margaret River WA.

Daily Ceremony acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the traditional custodians of the land we work on, and we pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging.

Ceremony [ ser-uh-moh-nee ] A unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. Aka, life.