The Edit : Learning acceptance, plus a powerful novel and a deepy satisfying farro salad
Editorial
The choices that make us
Like a pool of clear water, holding sunlight, my mind grasps nothing.
This is a line from an incomplete and not very good poem I wrote when I took myself out for the day during the last school holidays. I wrote this in the bush of the Blue Mountains where I live, overlooking a deep valley, cockatoos wheeling through the vertical landscape, their pristine wingspans cutting shapes out of the dark tree canopy and cliff faces behind them. I had sat down to write but very little came, my mind felt as clear as a crystal pool. It struck me that it was being in the bush that had brought about this state. Normally my mind is a whirlwind of plans, dates, worries, and obligations, but here, surrounded by the gums, blue vistas and bird calls I had grown up with, a peace enveloped me. The noise shut up for a minute.
As I write this, the clock has just ticked over midnight. It is now officially my birthday. Today I will be 42 and as I look at where I am in my life, I can say with certainty but also importantly without shame, that I am not where I wished I would be at this stage of my life. And in contrast to the serene state I opened with, my mind is clamouring right now. I am on the cusp of some major life shifts, some of which have come unexpectedly, others that have been a long time coming. Each of them though, are the consequences of choices I have made, and it is time I accepted that instead of leading me towards the life I desire, my past choices have only taken me further from it.
I am at a juncture then, not only in terms of what turns life might take, but also in relation to the kind of person I wish to be from now on. I can remain stuck in old patterns and repeat the same errors, or I can make new choices. It sounds simple but it’s not, because I think it is easy to overlook the first, and maybe the hardest step: acceptance. The reason I can say my life hasn’t worked out so well without shame is because I have accepted who I was in the past and who I am now.
I cannot change the past, and I have to give compassion to my past self, knowing that I made the best decisions I could at the time with the knowledge I had.
It means I accept myself in the present too, which makes it a lot easier to imagine growth. Continually living with past regret keeps you in a cycle of pain, whereas acceptance allows you to leave behind what you can’t change. It creates space. It also creates trust.
Trust in the self is important, but so is the trust that things will work out. I don’t have a faith, and I don’t believe in destiny, but I do believe that moving forward in life with a sense that you will figure it out increases our resilience and capacity for change. Trust in fact is the opposite of blind faith, it pivots the needle towards the self and says; you are the pilot, you have the resources, the knowledge, and the strength to carry on.
The only viable option I have then is to start making choices that will lead me towards a life more in tune with my authentic self. It was never meant to be easy but for that I am grateful, for without the hard we would not have the opportunity to grow. And while the jangling in my head right now is the antithesis of that calm I found in the bush, at least I know I can find it when I need to, and perhaps there will be a time when there are more periods of peace than there are of anxiety and worry. But that, ultimately, is up to me.
Dear reader…
I am always open to suggestions of things to review (literature! film! food! music! exhibitions!), and concepts or dilemmas that occupy your mental real estate and that you’d like to explore here. As long as it aligns with my ethos and is something I can actually do, then I am happy to consider it. I am also interested in taking on guest contributors, so please reach out if you are interested. Use the contact form below or go to Contact in the top menu. With love and thanks, M x
Picture taken in the central desert of Australia. Copyright Meredith Birrell, 2012
Explore
Review: Stone Yard Devotional (2023), by Charlotte Wood
There is something in the rhythm of Wood’s latest novel that feels sacred, ritualistic, meditative. Quiet and unhurried, the word I keep returning to is seeps. Like slow-moving water, like grief, like awareness, the book works its way gradually into the recesses of your psyche, finding the cracks, getting under your skin. Yet (and this is one of the important tensions in the book), there is much in the book that is loud, intrusive and disturbing. It is the way in which the quiet and loud are skillfully played off against each other that gives the book such a pulsating energy. Stone Yard Devotional has been included in both the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards shortlist and the Booker Prize longlist for 2024 and I will quote the Booker Prize chair of judges, Edmund de Waal, who sums up exactly how I felt after reading this book: “To reach the end of a novel and to be deeply moved and be unable to work out quite how that has happened is a great gift.” Stone Yard Devotional does work in subliminal ways and still, several weeks after finishing it, I can still feel its vibrational energy, and the questions it provokes still haunt me.
The story is told in the first-person by a female narrator in the form of diary entries spanning several years. She has left her relationship and her city job (where she worked to protect threatened species) to return to the place of her upbringing, the Monaro plains in southern NSW. After stopping to visit her parents’ graves, she arrives at a remote bush Catholic convent. By a process of slow accretion, in a way that is mysterious even to her, our protagonist assimilates into the convent, taking on duties and joining in on the religious rites and rituals. She even enthusiastically takes on the task of growing vegetables and improving the sister’s plain diet with Malaysian curries and the like. She has no faith and finds the lives of the nuns puzzling at best, disturbing at worst. Yet she labours on, adapting to this new rhythm, even as she is troubled by her conflicted feelings about leaving the world and its problems behind. She wrestles with questions of commitment, service, forgiveness, and atonement, struggles which are brought into sharp relief by three ‘incursions’ from beyond the convent’s limits; a mouse plague brought on by drought conditions in the north, the return of the mortal remains of a sister murdered in Thailand years earlier while supporting victims of domestic violence there, and concurrently, as a chaperone to the bones, the arrival of Sister Helen Parry, a school peer from the narrator’s past whose life of social activism, in its stark opposition to the protagonist’s, allegorises some of the principal themes.
If performing acts of devotion means committing to something larger than the self, if it means surrendering the need for answers in place of accepting a state of unknowing, then Wood’s novel navigates such vague terrain with elegance and agility. It is a quiet book because the ‘noise’ that animates some of the narrative’s most pressing questions - whether it be the terrifying sound of hundreds of mice scuttling inside the walls or the relentless clamour of unfolding worldly crises – is continually set against the measured rhythm of the nuns’ days. Days of duty - of devotion - somehow turn the volume down on everything else that is extraneous, yet without minimising the paralysing weight they can bring to bear. What is a moral life? What can we, or should we focus on when there is so much that demands our attention, our compassion, and our action? These are vital questions for our times, but rather than being declarative about them, Wood allows them to slowly infiltrate, to gradually build in intensity so that by the time the book is finished, you are aware of just how much you have been moved, and how many questions remain unanswered.
Eat
Merguez sausages and roasted vegetable farro salad with tahini dressing
The merguez is a North African spiced lamb or beef sausage and it’s the combination of these sausages with this salad and dressing that makes this dish. Having said that, this is hardly a recipe, well, there is one component that can be called such, the tahini dressing, but I don’t need to tell you how to roast vegetables or cook sausages. Though I do believe there is something about roasting the veg at a slightly lower temperature than you would think, and for slightly longer, that I believe intensifies the flavour. Of course this salad will go with other proteins very well or on its own as a lunch or light dinner, maybe even with a poached egg? Change up the vegetables as you wish.
Serves 2
INGREDIENTS
1-2 merguez sausages per person*
1 cup uncooked farro (pre-soaked overnight if you can)**
1 red capsicum
1 red onion
1-2 carrots OR 1 large potato
Blanched spinach or other greens to serve
Tahini dressing
1/3 cup hulled tahini
1/3 cup natural yoghurt
1 garlic clove, crushed
fresh lemon juice (about half a lemon’s worth)
sea salt
extra virgin olive oil
water
METHOD
Preheat oven to 180C. Cut the vegetables into large chunks and toss on a baking tray with olive oil and salt. Roast the vegetables for about an hour or until soft and deeply caramelised.
Meanwhile, prepare the farro and dressing. If your farro is pre-soaked, you will need to cook it in boiling water for about 10-15min until it is tender (it will retain some bite). If it is not pre-soaked, cook in boiling water 30-40min. Allow to drain and cool.
Mix all the dressing ingredients together adding evoo, salt and lemon to taste and enough water to achieve a pourable sauce similar to the consistency of cream.
Near the end of the vegetable’s cooking time, cook the sausages in a pan. Cover loosely with foil to keep warm.
When ready, toss the roasted vegetables (make sure to scrape up any caramelised bits from the tray) with the farro and tahini dressing, adding more olive oil, salt or lemon if necessary. Serve the salad with the sausages and greens on the side.
* You may need a specialty butcher for these. Substitute a good quality lamb or beef sausage.
** Farro is an ancient wheat and is available at most supermarkets. Adding a splash of vinegar to the soaking water will enhance the bioavailability of the grain’s nutrients as it breaks down the phytic acid, but it is not absolutely necessary.
