Entry Penned Beginning
Friday January 4th 2025 C.E
13:00 GMT+11
The more they stay the same.
It might have been more accurate to say everything old is new again.
It seems that the mobile phone carriers here have gone back to the old “if we didn’t sell it you can’t use the phone on our network” nonsense here. Not insurmountable but annoying to have to fix.
Our faster internet pipe is on its way hopefully next week but maybe up to 3 weeks, and our space is slowly taking shape to have some loud areas and some quiet ones.
Rather warm today so being inside and quiet is the prevailing preference; but for the other plans we have today I might be in the pool. All going well I will be able to get out to the lake next week and get my first ski of the season in, although if I am being honest with myself it might take a few weeks on the hydroslide before I build up the strength to get up on slalom again.
It is lovely having so much of my family around me again, I have missed them all dearly and it is a weight off my heart that everyone got to where they were going safely.
Being my first post since this journal went public I almost feel like I should have something more to say, or at least some nice photos; but then this space is for me not anyone else so it has what I put here I guess.
It is funny how different the energy feels here, there is a certain familiarity as the space we were in in Michigan had echoes of some this, and of course many of the spirits I work with have a presence in both places; but the feeling of the red earth beneath my feet, the sense of the clay and quartz and specks of gold, the song of the gum trees that is unlike any other, it all lends me a sense of energy. Being able to share this with so many of the folks I love and seeing the way the Dreaming touches each of them in unique ways is a joy that I never truly let myself believe I would know until it finally happened.
Being able to speak and share openly about what is going on in my life is also such an invigorating, and in some ways scary, experience. Even before we started on Project Emerald while a foreigner in the US there were a great many things I could not say, things I could not express or needed to disclaimer or simply elude to. Now that I am no longer there I am slowly finding the ways to re-express myself and to assess how it is that I show up in the world and wish to be perceived. It will, I think, take some time before the reticence that has been second nature to me fades as I slowly begin to feel safe again.
Yesterday was a lot of physical labor for our AU site, what I like to think of as base camp.
Many of us are simply saying ‘home’ to refer to wherever we are currently sleeping but I personally am choosing to find different words; home is where I will settle, somewhere on the western coast of Ireland, for me everything between here and there is just a stop along the way and part of the adventure.
With all the work yesterday today is something of a rest day, some folks recently arrived taking some time to acclimatise, some of us nursing our bodies after overdoing it yesterday *peers at my eldest, Vincent* and mostly doing things that are inside where it is cooler (currently 37 outside!); modifying phones to work on the Australian networks *glares at Telstra*, cooking up a lovely roast pork for Lunner (which is the meal that is to Lunch and Dinner as Brunch is to Breakfast and Lunch) and simply enjoying the experience of feeling safe, despite the stalker like behaviors of some folks.
So I know I said I had no photos for today but here is a lovely one taken through the window where most of us are sitting quietly at the table, just enjoying each others company and eating dim sims
I feel like the photo really doesn’t do it justice, perhaps it is because it is through the window or maybe because the phone was in landscape mode but the colours are somewhat washed out, the greens are deeper, greener and the red/orange of the earth is much more pronounced.
Going to leave it here for now, and probably go change the way posts appear on the blog now, the pink on black is just doing it for me.
-Robert James-Noonan O’Wayreth
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