True North

Dear hearts,

It's Friday!

Miss Mich has a new player for you. The lovely Triple J, not to be confused with our favourite music station, obvi. Triple J has christened all Friday’s going forward as Fuck Off Friday. Miss Mich completely agrees. It seems in the pen world, things just go off towards the end of the week. Nothing a glass of something fruity after 5 can't diffuse. It's just a matter of surviving the hours leading up…

Miss Christine has been on the phone chasing Miss Mich up for more little pearls of wisdom. It seems she is in a very serene and calm place, happy with the current arrangements in place with the Macedonian and the Arab and generally taking things as they come. We should all be so lucky. I have decided Miss Christine is my Muse. She in turn, very generously refers to yours truly as the Oracle, so all in all, the perfectly complementary friendship.

The last few weeks have been a flurry of activity. Two weekends in Melbourne to visit the Songbird, living like a Uni student in her Bruswick digs. Trams, trains and more people than Miss Mich has seen in some time. Seconded in the far far north, Miss Mich has become accustomed to the laisses faire attitude towards time. Or TI time if you will…The Torres Strait operates on a much more elastic and flexible wavelength in regards to time. And if truth be told, Miss Mich rather likes this languid approach. This combined with the perpective that we are just selling pens, not curing cancer, ensures one keeps one’s stress levels down for the most part. Except for those aforementioned Fuck Off Fridays… obvi.

Back to the Muse. Miss Christine and I have been discussing her new state of serenity. Has acceptance of the way things are, rather than wishing for what could be or should be, led our dear Muse to this present state of calm in which she finds herself? Miss Mich has proposed that once one releases the desire to have things exactly as one wants, releases the idea of control, it seems that the Universe, in its infinite and inverse wisdom, gives us that which we may have wished for in the very first place.

I hate to be a retro-hippy-philosopher, but this situation brings to mind that classic 70’s pearl: “Set something free. If it comes back, it is yours. If it doesn’t, it never really was.” A little bit like “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”. I don’t want to lose you Dear hearts, so I promise not to go on.

I must agree with Mark Epstein. We need to release ourselves from clinging to the ideals of how we would like things to be. We don’t really have that much control. The tighter we hold on, the less grip we have. Paradox nest pas? But if you think about it, it makes sense. We need to embrace the Zen approach. And as Epstein says, the essence of Zen is paradox. The less we obsess over something, the more insight we will have. Miss Mich must confess to feeling a little giddy when she concentrates too much on the matters of Zen wisdom. It’s a bit like meditation. If you are thinking consciously, Oh good, I am meditating, then clearly you are not. One just has to do it.

I prefer to think of it as navigating by instinct and intuition. Set your life’s GPS on auto. Enter in your nav points and set sail. Let your belly adjust your course and trust that it will negotiate the best possible route with the least possible upset. It is difficult to do Dear hearts, through her own experience, Miss Mich can attest, but the more we release, the easier it becomes.

Just ask our resident Muse…in her own lovely words…”it is beautiful and I am loving it”

Enjoy release and the weekend.


With love
Miss Mich