And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?”
And you may ask yourself, “Where is that large automobile?”
And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful house”
And you may tell yourself, “This is not my beautiful wife”
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground-Talking Heads (1981)
The in between is when something old ends and before the new path is laid out before you. There is a space you must inhabit—a place of uncertainty, of grief, a loss of your old ways of being.
So, that is where I was.
As mentioned in House Sitting Part 1, contacting your network of friends, family and the like is the first place to commence your journey. You never know what gold you will come your way.
There are rules, written and unwritten, about house sitting. Some you make up as you go along and some have been passed on by the sensei before you. There are also rules of conduct on the house sitting sites I joined. You can go check them out if you like.
House Sitting Rule #1: Join House Sitting Sites. In Australia, I have found these two sites to be helpful in my never-ending search for a good place to sit.
-Aussie House Sitters-This site has been the best one for me.
-Happy House Sitters
-Trusted House Sitters
House Sitting Rule # 2 - References: If you do not have reviews on the websites yet, get some personal references from friends, employers, and your parole officer. You can send this document to homeowners when you apply. It worked for me.
My message to friends, family, and others had elicited responses of help and love. I was building a network. Like mycelium, I was latching onto others; the threads of communication and connection were gently working. People were amazingly kind and helpful. It was not a torrent, more a warm trickle of help.
December and January (2018-2019) were deeply emotional times. I felt connected to parts of my life and others I could see drifting away, like a helium balloon in the distance. Those connections were slipping from my grasp. Some days I was crying, and other days I was thriving.
The beautiful acacia tree had entered my life and it was working on my being. I had not sought out this plant medicine, but it showed up at a time when it could do the most good. I was not aware of it while I was working with it. But I did intellectually know about the powers of such a drink.
Back when I first discovered the beauty, love, and energy of this drink, I became a god damn marketing guru for Acacia/Ayahuasca. My friend Nello and I would go out, and sure enough, we would start talking to someone. Conversation would go on, and I would bring up “the plant”. Nello used to look at his phone and say, “Well, that only took 10 minutes this time, Paul”.
Yes, it was impossible to bite my tongue. There are a couple of people I told whom I probably should not have mentioned it to. Unfortunately, I was largely unfiltered during most of 2019. You live and learn, and everyone really got to know me in the in-between period.
I got to know myself again, too. Amen.
As I mentioned, I spent some time in Barwon Heads as 2019 began. It was beautiful.
I was still a bit jumpy. I was in between.
Messages of support and possible house-minding offers continued to come in. A few people were offering me beds, but I was not asking. There were some lovely folks like Mick/Jayda, Claire, Joe, Simone, and Scottie who let me sleep in their spare rooms when I was struggling to find a pillow.
Actually, I had my pillow; I just needed a mattress, a couch, or a corner of a room on a rug.
I was not choosy.
Things looked beautiful from the attic windows. Life within the house’s walls was tense.
Housesitting was still a concept. Or as the orange Psycho puts it, “a concept of a plan”.
I repeat myself in this second piece, illustrating how my brain was working back then.
As we rolled into 2019, I was going to arrange cohabitation at the family home when I had nowhere else to go. We could do this. We had been together for 16 years. Care and love and history and family do not change that fast, do they?
Faster than a New York Minute.
1-2-3….Time to move on.
House Sitting Part 3-I Gotta Get Outta This Place!