in the middle of the night!

When sensible people should definitely be asleep!
Bats outside my window are flying low.
There's a mozi buzzing around my ears and trying to land...
for the longest time it seemed.

The light goes on.
The lap-top comes out.
Mailbox open!
Oh ... a friend across the waters has sent a note!
Oh and another friend from across an entirely different ocean has sent a lovely message too.
Bloggers,
Artists. 
Different timezones 
but not so different sensibilities!!

To think we've not sat down to share as much as a cup of tea... 
most of us...
and yet...
the space between can be so rich and so wonderfully full of life...
shared conversations over time
conversations that ebb and flow. 
A connection here becomes more familiar, then over there... 
weaving of stories in and out,
little bits
and sometimes a great deal.
Changing panoramas,
changing lives.
If any of you who have visited here (and I have visited you there) happen to read this....
know that in the middle of the night I am remembering the warmth of the exchanges
and relishing the field of connections that has been there for every kind of season and time.

I'm pulled away from the focus I once visited apon the blogosphere. Not wishing that were so... but practicalities intrude and things keep moving whether we want them to or not.

Now a little light rain falls.
Seems the middle of the night contains some small pleasures after all.
Sleep would be nice,
usually it is not at all evasive so I will allow this night of bleary-eyed wakefulness!

The blogosphere is such a vast entity, so large a horizon of engaged sharing. 
It teaches respect... or ... no...
lets say it has the potential to do so.
Maybe its better said that it begs from each of us the effort to know others, to flow with and around and notice and hear and learn and appreciate the nuances and minutiae of each others lives. 

Four years on its fascinating to think of what is known and understood, shared and treasured. 

Its all very well and good to have a creative life mapped out with the doing, the 'out there' stuff, navigating the outer realm that we move in and out of. But to have the space to negotiate the other stuff...to talk with creative beings in a quieter way... about the less 'out there' things ... that is precious.

So this little late night post is a tribute to all who took time to know something of what lives here.... behind the dashboard of Visual Eclectica ... and what lives with you.

That to me is a generous thing and what really does make the world go around. The quality of listening and engaging that some of us are very drawn to. Its through that I'm sure I have settled a little more into the essential ways I like to be... nestling in. 
Perhaps this late night meandering on the keyboard makes little sense. I feel sleep is close now and I will fade away gently into the sweet, rain-washed night!

I whisper good night and thanks my gentle friends!

'Tis a precious gift to be able to appreciate and share the small and tender things! There's strength in that too!

Lastly, from a much loved book:


"The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful."

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Thanks W & M!

from 2011 ... a little study