I watch the waves crashing. I watch the waves caressing. Always spreading themselves upon the sands and drawing themselves back, wave after wave. You can feel this with your breath if you pay attention. If you stay long enough. Linger a bit or a lot. Something happens, the breath somehow takes over. I can feel my body breathing, breathing me. There is no effort. There is no anything. Just me and my breath, my breath and me. Nothing else exists in this present moment. And this is how I see life, how the universe works. To give your presence, your attention to each moment and the moment after that. Eternal.

© Jackie L Hutchings  | December 27/21

After my mind splattering I often feel the greatest need to apologize, and if I don’t apologize my mind will convince me that I must, I should, or whomever was on the receiving end of the mind splatter will no longer like me and not want to be around me. My mind lately can actually convince me that I am not worthy of great friendships, love, connect, joy, laughter because I am not deserving. You have to prove yourself, the mind tells me. I remember my dear acupuncturist saying to me once after perhaps a little mind leak, “You are already enough. You are perfect. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone.“ These words sprung tears. Oh! She often tells me exactly what I need to hear. And I do get it—it’s what my soul needs, yearns to hear from me. And I find it so hard often when I am in pain—or my new languaging, feeling strong sensations in my body—to be in my heart, to be in my body, to be with these sensations, to be with me. I turn away, push away, look away, numb out when it’s all too much.

And I try, I am always trying to be better, to be worthy. It’s like I am always trying to prove something to someone. To prove I am nice. To prove I am sweet. To prove I am cute. To prove something. It is exhausting. It is draining. And it is all so far from the truth of my heart. The truth of who I am. My essence nature. I experience this when I am in nature, and sometimes with humans. When another humans resides, abides in their heart it somehow allows me to access mine. It’s fascinating that I have so much trouble doing this by myself. And yet really it makes so much sense. I get too tangled up in my head. The mind in full control. Holding the steering wheel so tight, seatbelt clamped shut. And me, not even riding shotgun, perhaps no even in the backseat. I’m in the trunk, bound, gagged—all of course involuntarily done by myself. Freedom comes from within. A deep inhale, a sweet exhale. Over and over, again and again. In this precious moment of eternal now. What a gift that I often ignore. What a gift. I realize this being alone does have a few drawbacks when I don’t have deep connections with others. Connections where we don’t just talk about the weather. Oh, I know, it is so cold. My car was frozen for days. I could not enter. I let it be. Yes, I gave up trying to get in to it. I know, I gave up at first, but somehow it turned in to surrender.

© Jackie L Hutchings | December 27/21

You
will be
by my side.

We will be
lazying  
in the sun
on our adobe
brick walled deck.

You
will have
just brought
me
a cup
of the most divine
coffee
on this
beautiful earth.

It is still decaf of course,
with the most decadent raw cacao one could ever find,
and a touch of this ’n’ that.
You never told me the this ’n’ that.
I never asked.

You never told me all your secrets.
And of these, I never asked.
It’s good to have a secret or two, or three
or more. It gives a sense of inner knowing.
A sweet trust in something deep inside of ourselves.

I love that
you have secrets
weaved into your cells
that I will never know
and you will never tell.

We sip from
our favourite mugs
they are matching,
of course,
we like many
of the same things
and yet
are so different
and the same.

I remember when we received our mugs
that are wrapped in our wrinkled hands
Your friend dropped by
quite unexpectedly,
out of the blue,
and yet we knew,
she was on her way.

She sat the gifts
upon the golden sands
and before opening them
we wept.
You remember, don’t you?
Yes, of course you do.

Today on this Sunday,
we have
the whole day
planned, allowing
it to unfold
in each moment
which is
just as precious
as the last.

You reach for my hand,
my favourite thing, you know this,
and you’ve know this
even before our eyes fell upon each other.

I know,
they did not fall,
they sparkled, recognized, delighted,
the moment we met.

The sacred knowing,
of having known each other
forever past
and forever more
eternal
in each other’s hearts.

We had longed
quietly,
yearned
for each other,
softly morned
each time we had missed
each other in the café,
or just around the corner,
or on that park bench.
Never regretting those moments passed,
just cherishing the moments present.
This eternal now.

I shall die on a Sunday in Santa Fe on a gorgeous sunny day.

© Jackie L Hutchings | December 27, 2021
from Writing Practice | a timed 12 minute writing (edited slightly whilst I typed on this 28th day in December)

My red, yellow and white Liverpool Football Club bag aroused some attention with the boys. “You like football?” “Yes.” Now football to me meant actual football. You kick the ball with your foot football, or footy as we sometimes called it back in England. In Canada and the United States there is American Football, which is certainly not football since for most of the game the ball is in the players’ hands, and snuggled into their bodies when running. Not football. After these whispers in homeroom there was gym class. I followed a few girls down the dimly lit corridors and up a flight of stairs to the exercise room. I sat down at the back on the icy cold floor. A blonde feathered hair girl looked at me and whispered, “The boys are downstairs, in the gym.” I whispered, or rather croak-whispered, “I’m a girl.” Now this was just one incident that made me want to grow out my plain brown haired Beatle cut…

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 15/21

Many of us have this great, reasonable fear of these types of spiders. When I was staying at a friend’s home for two months, in what we call indoor spider season, there were a fair amount of these large spiders— large to me is bigger than the palm of my hand. These ones I don’t sit close to, I usually relocate them with a tupperware container and a sturdy piece of cardboard—not  a flimsy piece of white paper that I often see people using, oh, no, sturdy and thinnish is good. The trick is to have confidence in your first maneuver of placing the said container over the giant spider. Sometimes I let out a bit of a scream or a few small ones while doing the trapping part. And then there’s the ever so much harder part, the sliding  of the sturdy cardboard underneath the tupperware. I notice some spiders are trickier and will start moving around really fast searching for an opening. Others can be more chill, still. I like these one more. The zen ones!…

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 15/21

Back in England our school teachers were rather strict, well, except for Mr Izzard, Mr Izzard the gym teacher we all had a crush on. Well, he’ll have to wait for another time. Mrs Harrington was one of the strictest teachers, and unfortunately she was my homeroom teacher so I spent a lot of time with her. Now in Mrs Harrington’s class there was no laughing—well no invited laughing, but there was a lot of stifled giggles, or giggles turned into coughs. You know, when you you’re not supposed to laugh it makes you laugh more. And well, if you breathed the wrong way you would get in trouble. So in Canada in Grade Seven, my first introduction  to school here, the teachers seemed way less strict. You were allowed to breath any way you wanted to and laugh. With some teachers it almost seemed like their strictness, or lack there of, was way on the other side of the spectrum. Sooooo, me being new to all this freedom needed to try things out, to really see how much freedom one could have…

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 08/21

I now remember I actually had my first sips of booze back in England, not with Sam in her unfinished basement. I was under twelve. Dad used to make his own beer. Now and then he would let us have just a little sip or two. I don’t remember if I liked it or not. I think I did as I vaguely remember asking for sips at Christmas time. I also remember Port. I loved Port. We were allowed a little nip of Port at Christmas time too. There was an awful lot of other things to consume. Like chocolates. So many chocolates. Quality Streets. I would try and nick a few of my favourites. The elusive green foil covered one. We all wanted that one. Solid milk chocolate with mint? Yes, I think so. And oh-so many more… Then there were the After Eights, and that chocolate that was in the shape of an orange and you had to smash it to open it up and then lunge at the segments before anyone else could get their grubby little hands on them! And there was trifles and biscuits and wafers and blancmange and well, I remember the trifle, it had these sponge cakes at the bottom soaked in Sherry—yuck! I did not like Sherry! So every year Mum and Auntie Sheila would make an extra trifle sans the aforementioned yucky sponge cakes soaked in Sherry…

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 08/21

The Hursts had an extension built onto the back of their house on River Road, a sunroom. Now this was quite the bonus for us kids as we could hang out there while the adults did their adult type things in the living room, often called a lounge, in England. Both names work. I enjoy lounge, I do like to lounge around as often as I can.

One evening the adults went down to the pub, which was conveniently walking distance away. My dear cousin Sally, the oldest, decided to break out something she had purchased on her recent trip to France, a carton of French cigarettes. French ciggies! Oh my! I believe I was sixteen, which made my older sister and cousin Clare seventeen, and Sally nineteen. So all definitely old enough to try some French ciggies! Kirsty, my younger sister was only thirteen. I don’t remember if she got to smoke these fantastic French ciggies or not…

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 08/21

This letting go or surrender thing, I must admit, I don’t really know how they work. Are letting go and surrender the same? I don’t know. One of my favourite poets, Rilke, writes about living the questions. I never really understood this until a few months ago. It’s not about your mind furiously searching for the answers, but more to breath into the questions. And what question do I have pressing against my brain—or what questions do I have pulsing, pounding in my heart? The heart questions are the ones to listen to. The mind will regurgitate the same questions often, always. I know dear mind that you are trying to keep me sage, but dear mind, I must live, I desire to live my truth and to do what I am here to do. And I’ve known, I know it’s to write. And of course those dreadful how’s often get in the way, don’t they? But how are you going to bring in money writing? How are you going to pay the rent? How how how?

© Jackie L Hutchings | November 08/21

Auntie Maud was much bigger, taller than Uncle Albert. He was always stooped over. Maybe that was because he was always bent over his wallet pulling out pound notes when we were at a restaurant. They were both on the couch next to Auntie Gwen and Grandma. They were also quite stooped when they were standing. My favourite place was in the kitchen. That is where my Auntie Sheila was. “Alright Jacks?” she would often ask. Always checking in with me. I liked that. And often sneaking me a little nibble of what she was preparing or an extra rich tea biscuit or chocolate covered digestive. Without the chocolate they tasted rather like cardboard. I knew about the taste of cardboard as I often sat in a box in our living room with the words ‘Home Pride’ on it. I’m not sure what that was, so back to the kitchen with my Auntie Sheila. Mum was in there too. They were preparing out great feast, Christmas dinner.

© Jackie L Hutchings | October 25/21