I haven’t been burning incense for my meditation since I was ill a couple of weeks back, because my throat is still very sensitive and I don’t want to irritate it. But I thought I would try some incense cones which I picked up at meditation group. They are literally small, solid cones, about a centimetre high. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I assumed you just stand them on their base and light the pointy bit as you would a normal stick, which is what I did. When I finished and opened my eyes, the thing still seemed to be sitting there, except that it was grey. But when I went to pick it up, it crumbled between my fingers, because it was all ashes, just in that same perfect cone shape. And it had scorched a black circle on the wooden holder it was standing on.
I’m not sure what is the point of that, except that I didn’t know what to write, so that’s what I started with! I suppose some kind of metaphor, that things may look as though they’re still there, still the same shape as they always were, but when you touch them you find they’re just ashes and they fall apart.
Outside the window, it looks like a beautiful morning. It was raining here yesterday morning – probably not delighting too many shepherds after all – but it brightened up into a nice day. About time too. Maybe we’ll get the barbecue out tomorrow. Friday is barbecue day in the summer. I casually mentioned it to my daughter last week, and she got quite excited. Talking to her yesterday, she said she was looking forward to it. These small rituals of family life are still important, even when you’d think everybody is too mature to care about them. Actually, since she has become an adult, she has rediscovered all these small things that she would not have admitted to caring about a few years ago. She is a lovely young woman, and I feel very privileged to be her mother. We don’t always agree, and I wish she was a bit more clear about what she wants to do with her life, she isn’t making things any easier for herself, but it’s not for me to tell her what to do, and if I tried, that would be counter-productive anyway, it always was. All I can do is try and support her in any way I can.
Sometimes I wonder about confiding in her, opening up to her about my feelings about her dad. She knew about all the problems at the time of the cat, of course, she was still living here then. I felt bad afterwards that I shouldn’t have confided in her so much. I think she knows that things are still not great between us.