Are you familiar with 3am: the Artists (un)holy hour?

Meditations with Mother Earth

Day 5. By the Creek, under a big Pine. Mid-morning and close of daylight. Mild, cool in the shade. 3rd September 2024.

The wind blows strong today and it is much cooler than it was yesterday, making me feel out of sorts and chaotic. I remembered that covering my ears helps and luckily found a forgotten hoodie in the car, which I slipped on in time to start our (windy) Writer’s Circle. The creek is high and the water sparkles in a sun that is much more like the usual Waking Season weather.

I woke at the dreaded 3am this morning, after a strange, upset night, feeling like a stranger in my own skin. My head hurt with a pounding that echoes into my day. Anxiety bores holes in all the enthusiasm I was feeling, like the heavy winds have brought doubt, which it blew straight into my mind.

3am can sometimes be a holy hour for the Artist, where they vibrate with new ideas and long to jump into them, but this particular 3am was not that for me. The holes bore deeper. I was awake after a fitful nap, where the birds trilled incessantly to each other and to me to wake up to a new day, hopefully different to the night I’d had.

I walked with the wind and my partner on my usual Morning Routine, with layers of clothes not needed in days past. A cold snap, so usual for the Waking Season. A reminder, more important this year because of the way the season hit so hot, that we need balance, just as the land does. I welcome the cooler temperature, whilst also acknowledging a new excitement inside me, for the hotter days to come!

The headache has stayed with me all day, no relief. I wonder now, in the cooler moments of dusk, when the mosquitoes are beginning to bite, what the pain signifies? Headaches are something I’ve contended with since a young, highly-sensitive child, in loud and chaotic school classrooms, with a head-full of anxiety. But today, despite my terrible nighttime wakings, I have felt so much positive energy around me and directed towards me. Walking and talking with my partner and with friends - filling my soul with their hopeful stories and positive perspectives. Affirmations that have helped loosen the grip of 3am anxiety spirals, about whether my work is really worthwhile. Yet, the pain has not abated.

The birds are quiet around me, although I know they are there and the sound of the highway, incessant, feels louder than usual: the pain in my head mirrored to me from the outside.

Suddenly I hear the mournful/hopeful call of a pair of whip birds. They are a bird I long to see, but never have in all the years of hearing their unique calls over the land. They call out to me often at home and in the wooded places I go, always keeping their distance, enticing me to search but never find. Perhaps it is the same for finding the meaning in my pain?

Heavy wind brings with it stories from far-away lands, coming to me with scents of fire and smoke, with the sweet pollen gifted by spiky Lomandra flowers, with the hum of an otherworldly being or with the unique vibration of life being lived elsewhere. He has settled down now, as I swing gently on my hammock, at the close of an unsettled day.

The following poem was written many years ago as I sat atop a mountain, when I was feeling cold, inside and out: disconnected. Grandfather Wind showed me a new way to see. I love the serendipity of coming across this poem on the same day I was writing about my difficulties dealing with a cold wind.

Grandfather Wind

My eyelids feel cool and damp.

The air cold and dry.

When the wind hits my face it feels like a cool eucalypt balm

on my eyelids. I feel

quiet here.

It is the Winds domain.

He blows

through everything

on this mountain,

cold and dry breaths,

breathing through leaves,

through trees,

through dirt and grit,

through feathers and hair,

his voice grainy

speaking of grief and mystery,

speaking of winter and clear cold skies.

Everything is listening to his song.

The birds,

their random tweets quickly lost

in his rumbling whisper.

Quiet yet loud

loud yet gentle

gentle yet strong.

I feel him

as sensation,

sharp bursts of cold through clothing, through lung.

My eyelids feel cool and damp,

but he feels cold and dry.

I'm here

to capture something of this land, this mountain

but wind cannot be captured

he goes where he wills

he is not meant for capturing

and why would anyone wish to do so?

His voice,

his message is freedom,

unhindered and unrestrained

and we must take from that our own Truth.

What is it for me to be unhindered and unrestrained?

Where do I wish to travel in each moment?

To be the wind.

Picking up leaves, sand, stones where I go and

dancing together for a time,

then swirling on.

Blowing through the feathers of kookaburra

one moment,

the hair of human

the next.

Today he feels old,

ancient Grandfather spirit,

but on other days he feels young,

cheeky boisterous

and still other days he feels full,

ripe masculine,

warm and strong, caressing

skin and gliding through hair like a lovers caress.

Beauty in the small details.

The joy one can feel when being close to small things:

the fine etched lines in bark,

the delicate loveliness of a tiny flower,

the sharp sweetness of spiky leaves.

Connecting to each detail and knowing these details make up

the whole, each as important as the others,

each unique and divine,

each longing for connection.

Thank you Grandfather Wind,

for this reminder.

Gratitude to be reminded to look closely

to look within,

to notice and therefore

to connect.

And before I leave,

there is more you wish to share

Because you

never leave. Blowing

around, over, under, through, into, against

always somewhere on Earth,

connecting

the threads of this planet together

uniting everything

as you connect with each small part

that makes the whole,

leaving threads of connection

in your wake,

as memory,

as reminders.