Adventures in Paradise

241218

Prelude to Long Walk to the Truth: Book 2.

Yellow Brick Road to Truth

Nearly at end of the Book 1: Morocco. The Donkey Walk. Can’t wait to start into Book 2, the serious Long Walk Pilgrimage from Spain to India.

Not all on foot, it must be admitted. But quite a lot was.

I have moved from the torture prison of the scammer conman, the fraudulent so-called Dr, Smith and his psycho-loco poor lost soul would-be chatelaine. 

Yes, I did get a few chapters done there but it was a 6-month long saga of fielding insults and abuse, bullying and intimidation. Basically stymied my creative flow.  

So pleased to have found safe haven in Serenity, my new home. It looks straight across to Koala Mountain Sanctuary my old home of 40 years on Mt. Uki. I became a climate refugee this last year when my studio home there collapsed as a result of the damage by Cyclone Debbie (2017) and a previous tornado.

Serenity is a share house. I now live with a beautiful artistic lady, the Goddess Diana, a vegan with high values of Beauty, Love, Joy. Deeply concerned at the future of life on Earth. Lives her ideals.

A painter of the nanoscopic world. Creator of angel sculptures from recycled bits of anything. With her decorators’ eye and antique collector’s touch she has created a beautiful studio environment. Her eclectic objects are pleasingly displayed all around what was basically a fairly ordinary suburban house, now transformed into a gallery. The eye is charmed as it roves from one precious beautiful thing to the next. Her lifetime of treasures. Each object deeply meaningful to her. I see a lot of myself here, especially in the collections of tiny things. Here I can work surrounded in peace, birds, trees. There is even a pool. Pity I can’t manage the steps down. One day I will. I am commanding my body to walk again. I can. I will. I do. I’m at the will stage.

 I arrived here quite raddled in a heatwave. Three days of torrid 35-40 degrees and no aircon just fans and showers. I was quite heat affected. Hallucinating when I closed my eyes. Sweating constantly. Really unwell. Couldn’t eat for a day. My beautiful house sharer wasn’t coping with me. I wasn’t coping with me. Would not have been able to do the move if it hadn’t been for dearest Adi, a friend in deed. I just collapsed. All too much for this old bear. I felt quite dislocated, barely holding it together in a new place, still hurting from the season in hell I had just escaped from. Operating on some subconscious automatic. But, hey. Here I am again. I have survived!  It seems like a dream that happened to someone else.

Then came the storms. 2 days of gales, hail, strobing lightening and the whole north coast copped it. The communications went down and I, like many others, had to live with no phone, Internet, TV. The power went out as poles & lines were down. With no power, no water. Diana made the place into a wonderland with giant scented candles. We sat in the humid evening outside on the veranda overlooking the pool, sharing a plate of hors d’oeuvres and snippets from the sagas of our lives. Getting to know one another. She is more than a decade younger than me, but we still share a commonality of experiential life events. She is as slim as I am gross. I watched her swim in the gloaming, wishing I could join her in the rain-freshed water. One day. Soon!

It is the Eve of the holiday I call Crazy Day. XXXmesss. 
I am not a religious believer, so to me it is a day of work. Into my creative flow. I am about to finalize the Moroccan adventure. Already setting my sights on Book 2. So many memories are crowding in, rushing at me saying “me, me, me, do me!” 

The Alhambra

Paris 68

.

.

Herat, Afghanistan

                                                                    

Taj Mahal.

Montserrat

A first step for Mankind

                                           .

 Himalayan high snows and Tibetan thangkas

 

.

So much more;:everything in between, before and after.

Well my hearties, all in the fullness of time. 
It was 50 year ago.

Driving me forward on this last burst, I draw inspiration from 2 legends of writing. 

Hemingway, writing in his last days about his 1920's Paris experiences.

Patrick Leigh-Fermor who died finishing his memories of his own early 30's long walk across Europe from Holland to Mt. Athos, A boy then, just out of his teens

. 

Patrick the young adventurer on his epic walk from the Hook of Holland to Mt. Athos.

 What a man he became! 

Patrick, the WW2 hero.

                                                                     

These are the flag bearers. I will plant my flag on the hill with theirs.

But will I get you all back to Australia? I have several more books after my Long Walk.

In the dawn tomorrow, head down tail up. So little time, so much to tell. Yes, I had a full life. Let me share just some before I go. Safe in the Cloud for some future intelligent lifeform to access and know what it was to be a woman of the human kind in the cultural morass of the 20th C. as we call it.

I will submerge myself in getting it all into the blog,
https://longwalktothetruth.blogspot.com/2012/06/hello-whats-this-all-about.html
for anyone wanting to check out Book 1.

That’s All, she wrote…..