I washed my clothes in the shower last night, then hung them up on the clothes line. I slept late this morning to let them have a chance to dry. When I got up they were still wet.
I still needed to decide whether I would stay another day (as Mike had intimated that I would be welcome to do) or take up the offer of some folk on the farm to drop me off at Woodend, 6 or 7km towards Bendigo, where I had walked to yesterday arvo.
Mike often doesn't sleep well, after the habits he developed looking after his quadriplegic wife for over 20 yrs (who needed turning every 20 min), so when i saw him with his eyes shut on the lounge beside the commercial kitchen, I thought to take up his brother Tim's invitation to visit him & have a chat. On receiving a text from Tim, I thought he must already be up, so I visited him & we had a cuppa, & chat.
Wow. What a man. He said "Come in!" But could hardly talk, & said he had just finished his morning spew. He had had a few operations several months ago, and then a month or so later the right side of his head had become numb, and he had started getting double vision (each eye on its own saw well, but they weren't making a single image in his head). He could still walk around or drive, as long as he kept one eye shut. Today he said he had a doctor's appointment to find the results of recent blood tests. Then we started talking: life, the universe, purpose, and meaning. We found we had very similar understandings of the core of the meaning or purpose of life, but because of different backgrounds and life experiences, the next level out - our understanding of how to live out, or express, that core, was different.
As this became apparent I noted within me a growing frustration, or anxst. We left on amicable terms. But I knew this was a personal battle I just HAD TO follow through on. I couldn't do a walk like this without meeting many, many, people who would be different to me in different ways, and I could not let any growing friendship be based on something as temporary and ephemeral as that we presently agreed on all the ways and means of living out what we perceived to be our life purposes. Especially when Creative Love invites you to be a walking companion.
As I walked off to see Mike, I realised I had to deal with this thing in me, not run from it. So I said to him that I'd stay at least for the morning, maybe another night, and went with Mike on a morning fruit run.
We met the same folk as yesterday, and talked about me still hanging around. On the way home Mike shouted me a pulled-chicken roll. I offered to help in any way I could, and Mike asked me to pick a big punnett of fresh blackberries, which I did.
One of the brothers popped his head in again. Would you believe it, he is about to set up a community for people who were homeless, or at least wanted to relocate to a communal way of life, something our community in Orange has been interested in, and also which Cornerstone (a Mission Order, of which I am a member) has been doing something of for 40 years. An interesting conversation began..
Then Tim was driven back from the doctor's surgery by this man's lady. Apparently, the doctor could not explain his condition from the blood test results, and gave him a letter to hand in at the Footscray Western District Hospital in Melbourne.
Now he needed a driver to take him there. All the others had work they were in the middle of, and had potential buyers for the property coming to look at it with the agent this afternoon.
I realized that this might be partly why creative love had me to stay on, and share a car trip with Tim to Melbourne, and, within 15 min, I was behind the wheel of Tim's Peugeot wagon.
And, I started hearing his story. Wow. Like an Arabian knight's tale. I hope I get to record it, and put it up here. (I just told my daughter who rang that it was horrific. Tim overheard me say this and softly interjected... " The biggest blessing of my life!")
We arrived at about 3:30 pm and we've just bought the second 2hr parking ticket for the car. And I've done a line drawing of Tim (or one of his cousins).
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Little serendipities abound, and now, about 6:30pm, Tim has gone in to see a doctor!
We'll see what happens. It sure is fun walking with creative love.
I'm back near my starting point for this walk, but very at peace. With much to learn, more than I knew.
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