The day dawns fresh-breezed and sunny and we have jobs to do. We bought sticky tape, non-sticky tape, varnish, oils, turps and scrubbers, many things hardware, for we are preparing this house for letting and leaving. As the lists are made, we see how much there is still left to do, and remind ourselves how much we have already achieved. The five indoor cats watch us through the windows, follow us from room to room, sensing some change is afoot. The jacaranda trees beyond the walls bend and flip in the breeze whilst vervet monkeys leap the branches, sure-footed, swinging like acrobats. Perhaps they watch us too, curious but uncaring. Sunlight lifts the newly oiled deck boards into a shiny conker warmth, one coat complete, a second to reapply, hot work under the broiler in the sky. Various bits of furniture are advertised and sold, little holes filled in, taps re-washered, walls brushed and touched up, door and window frames varnished to a shine. Moving forward, ever moving forward. Sometimes a task presents as too demanding so we break it down into smaller parts until the whole thing is complete. At others, we sail merrily along, buoyed up by sharing the process, bantering, laughing, pausing for breath, discussing the best way to achieve the end result. We allow for rests and diversions such as going out for Eggs Benedict with avocado and strong coffee, or a trip to the dog park to throw ball for the big soft retriever to catch and chase after. And all the time we talk on many things, not cabbages and certainly not kings, but on concepts and reflections, mind-mapping and acceptance of self, gatherings and solitude, our observations on everything Life. We have always talked that way. Not for us the idle chatter of wasted words. We are sentence makers, thinking people, curious and interested in a new way to see old things. We ask each other, How do you see this, or that? and then we listen to and consider the response we hear.

When we join others, I sit and listen to their discussions on what appears superficial to me. It isn’t that I judge, because I don’t but when the subject under the lights is only about a situation they all know and inhabit, the words just seem to circle pointlessly to me. Unless there is curiosity and reflection, the subject remains solid, unmoving, stuck in time, with the inhabitants thereof stuck with it. There is no right or wrong in the way we converse, but I always want to dive beneath the surface, to discover the depth, texture, movement and flow of this subject. It could be all about bin collection or the lack of it and that could take up a whole evening, resolving not at all from where I sit. It could be any number of similar issues under the microscope, until the minutiae has been thoroughly talked out and absolutely nothing has changed and my legs are itching to move on, to move beyond the tiddleypom and out into the wide open spaces, curious like Alice.

Sometimes I think I am an onlooker in this life. I love people and gatherings, conversation and laughter, sharing a meal and so on, but give me anytime the meeting of true minds, of thinkers and wonderers, of those who live on the edge of all truths accepting none of them and all of them at the same time. I am a loner, a weirdo, different, odd. So be it. Although I have met only a few differently odd weirdo loners, we know each other immediately even if we never met before. We connect instantly and then, as is our nature, break apart. I used to want to change myself, to find complete happiness in evening-long conversations about bin collection or lack of it, but I cannot change so instead I accept who I am and who you are and it is a peaceful warm place in which to live. And, over time, I have learned that to initiate a conversation by asking the right question can result in a shift in direction, in content. I can ask, as the chat on buying carpets is wearing me thin, Have you ever made a carpet, dyed wool, walked barefoot on a silk Persian rug, been to Turkey, or anywhere else, for that matter, to watch a carpet story being assembled in full technicolour? Oh yes? How did you feel watching that, do tell, all the details please. Ah, no, not facts, not facts, not pronouncements, but feelings. How did you feel?

After a few blank stares and some throat clearing, my gaze fixed firmly on my target, a tentative response trickles out and I finally get to hear the voice of the person before me instead of the repetitious rote, the factual quotes, the I-agree-with-him platitudes. I get to the real beneath the mask. It’s exciting and informative and suddenly I am engaged, fascinated and gently questioning further until I see you, oh there you are, just you, no pretence, a warm lively interesting human being.

How easily we bend to a shape in order to fit in, with our statements and judgements, and yet how soft and vulnerable we really are, and how very beautiful we become when just one person shows true interest in how we really feel about something.