Things To Do While Sitting With Fear

Things To Do While Sitting With Fear

Wait until it’s dark. Step out the back door and turn on the light. See how far the light travels across the backyard. It reaches the garden shed and the lemon tree and the trampoline. This is the measure of where you feel safe because of what you can see. See that the snails have climbed up the fence because rain is coming. Wait for the possum with its baby to scurry across the top of the fence. Prophets know how to read the signs.

Boundaries are not unlike this.

The night is a curtain, drawn to limit your view. You know what lies in the shadows behind the lemon tree and the trampoline: leftover bricks and roofing tiles and stacks of black plastic pots. The garden shed is a mausoleum of lawnmowers and garden tools, sundry odds and sods, bags of potting mix and stakes for the tomatoes you’ve been meaning to plant each season.

Perception is not unlike this.

Stand against the west wall of the house when the sun sets and feel the heat baked into the bricks sear your back as your face cools in the evening air. Stand there again in the morning as the sun begins to rise and absorb the coldness into your back as your face warms.

Shame is not unlike this.

Seek out where the swallows roost in the underground car park at the shops. Their movements remind you of how the carpark looks during the busiest shopping hours. The lorikeets wait until dusk to settle in the tree outside the TAB. These are the parentheses of our days.

Uncertainty is not unlike this.

The shadow you carry through the valley is the same shadow you carry to the mountain top.Let the shadow’s long fingers collect the cobwebs from the cornice in the ceiling and make fairy floss from it. The shadow will offer it to you. You eat it.

Disappointment is not unlike this.

Go into the garden and look for ladybugs. You will find a stick insect instead. Watch the bees in the flowers. Listen to them.

Expectation is not unlike this.

The lemon tree will produce fruit whether you tend to it or not and one day you will make friends with the weight of fear.