As I emerged

Today I came out of my chrysalis of lying low. I did know I was kind of cocooned in the responsibility of setting up a new household and trying hard to recover from a bout of flu. I haven’t been the only one, lots of people have been sick, or had sick kids and family.

As I emerged I saw so much rubbish had been removed. So no more bookcases and rooves in middle of roads. And piles of mattresses and household stuff spilling onto streets — nowhere to be seen. It feels good not to see this anymore!

However the rooves are like plastic tupperware for kids, orange, and blue, yellow and wet, wet, wet. And everywhere I look something else is missing– gone – building, natural creation, and there are a few for sale signs even on houses without rooves–people too tired to rebuild. The main street of Tully fishing shop has a whole section next to it missing, the Retravision has relocated and what is left is dripping and smashed.

Several trees from Mitchell Park appear to have gone, especially a big one that I clearly remember when we first came to live here. Whole buildings are demolished. But let’s see the people now. People make a town more than the buildings.

I visited the post office to send off some of our anthologies. It was safe and sound. I went to the photoshop, and had a chat with Helen. I found out they lost the roof of their house just around the corner of where we have been moved too. The floor was a bit patchwork, but the shop is not too bad. I was happy to give her the anthology and she was so appreciative of it.

She like many others, has said “please let me know when the launch is on, we need celebrations in the community.” She is such a warm and charming person, and very supportive of people writing, and doing other things in the community.

I went to visit a gift shop of a family we know in Tully and got involved in a conversation on books, writing, reading, and community. It was quite a chat. People are all emerging from some sort of dream of what life was to a life of what is important and simplified.

As I think about yesterday where a good writing friend visited, and yarned, I am reminded of what is important in life. We celebrate survival yet we long to do more than survive. We are searching for some kind of meaning, some kind of light and a light of community.

Yet on the other hand physical challenges continue, and flooding starts up and roads are cut. Arteries to other experiences, friends, places are limited- in a physical sense. Can’t get out and see things in our whole area, but locked into properties and towns with road closures.

Yet opening out, can the coocoon of the human heart create places where we write, connect, dream, sing, paint, repair what we can, and begin to rebuild our way to the sunlight that is coming.

This is such an interesting time for me as I fast in preparation for the Baha’i new year. I am thinking about all these physical challenges, reflecting, preparing for a new year. The world around me is stripped bare, we can see all the houses, the insides of the houses – the skeletons of people’s hopes and dreams, stripped back for rebuilding. They are away from their homes, sharing spaces with other families and friends.

This afternoon I visited another creative friend and her little one. It was a time to reflect and rejoice on dreams we have for our own creative endeavours. The need to create spaces, maybe they are cocoons and shelters, from which we fly out to see all the beauty around us. I felt cocooned in a different way – cocooned in love, which gives one the power to heal.

It is time to reach out and find the colours of community spirit shining and kaelidescopic, varied and changing, refining themselves into new patterns.

Last cyclone I saw butterflies afterwards, but this time I see dragonflies, returning green, mountain mists, and hear her song– the song of the mountain singing her regreening.

(c) All rights reserved Images and Words June Perkins, must gain permission to republish elsewhere.

—————First published in PEARLZ DREAMING