19 April 2018

Lost in deconstruction

During the past few days this phrase has been going through my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I’m doing fine. I’m just a bit ‘lost in deconstruction’. Our garden is a perfect illustration: after all these years we want a complete makeover and to achieve this, we have to deconstruct it completely. The hedges around the vegetable plot need to be taken out, the lie fruit trees need to be moved elsewhere, etc.

From a fairly classical garden with grass and planted borders we are aiming for a wilder, more natural one, including paths that lead to spots with inspiring plants and flowers and colours that change through the seasons; and what I am wishing for specifically: no more grass. Our garden architect from Tuinen in Beweging(quite an appropriate name, as it means “Gardens in Movement”) translated our wishes into a plan and we want this to become reality as soon as possible. This unavoidably means going through a deconstruction phase - which feels very chaotic and confusing, and sometimes a trifle hopeless.

And that is how I sometimes feel myself nowadays. Not surprising really, when I think of all the great changes in my life in the past year. Some of these changes I consciously initiated myself, others just happened. My own landscape is being redrawn and it looks chaotic at times.

Good old Nietzsche was probably right when he said “You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star”. Our garden project also proves to be a source of inspiration. We have laid out the paths with sticks and boards. A theoretical design on paper, envisaged in our minds, can now be experienced tangibly. Our body supplies us with new information that our brain did not have before. The initial design is slowly being adapted, and what felt complicated at first, becomes clearer, one step at a time. Sometimes I can picture our final garden, and it feels great.

In my life I now also have these aha moments quite often, when I almost literally feel how my brain gets something that my body has known for a long time, like it is catching up. I also realise that I have to give it time and that I do not need to fill my days with more action. In Africa there is a saying that goes: “Wait every now and then, so that your soul can catch up”.

Lost in deconstruction

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