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I sit every dawn, in the Flightpath of the Birds. In the space between the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun. And all is well with the world. I breathe in the birdsong and the fading stars, and every cell in my body delights to be alive. My mind travels though, marching ahead into the day to come. A thousand thoughts all asking to be remembered.

When the sound of the food trucks increases in frequency, I know that my greeting of the dawn is over. And the March of the Mind intensifies. And the day begins. Scroll through twenty different chat groups with hundreds of unread messages each – see where everyones thinking is at, where everyones fear is at, where tension is building, where questions remain unanswered, where opportunities present themselves. I dig and I delve and I pull from this box all the pieces of that part of the puzzle that I am trying to piece together. A puzzle that everyone is working on together but someone lost the lid so no one really knows what it is that we are building. We look for shades of colour and shapes of edges. We sort the pieces and offer our neighbours the shades that match their part.

I stop sometimes, and remember The Flightpath of the Birds at Dawn, and I breathe it in again. I soak up the now warm sun. I drink tea while the Mother of the House tends to her seedling trays and we sample her latest greens, noting how they change shape and colour daily. We marvel at the wonder of it all. We talk about food a lot, and the prospects of everyone growing it. And then back to the puzzling.

There comes a point where my body tells me it is done, and even when my mind argues very convincingly, I listen, because I know that it knows. That sleep is more important than ever in these times we are in. And the morning comes with clarity for a few precious hours.

We would like to invite you all to share thoughts of your own. They can be long, short, with images, without images, poems, artworks – expressions really, of what these times are bringing to your surface. If you would like to contribute, please email amavaoluntu@gmail.com

Theresa Wigley

Theresa has always been fascinated by stories, by how we form them, how we share them, who’s telling them. She is passionate about listening, and encouraging lesser heard voices to find their audience. She hopes one day that these stories can find their way back to the fireside, but in the meantime, she strives to share her knowledge of media with youth to capacitate them to create their own narratives, rather than being shaped by what they consume.