the lake

When I started writing I read somewhere that if you are not ready for your mother to read what you write then you are not ready to write. The same goes, I thought, for one's boss, one's friends and one's colleagues, and ultimately for all beings. According to some, and I edge towards rather than away from them, the bat of a butterfly wing can move mountains, the beat of a heart stop a war, or the ripples from a word make peace and thus, in the etheric mandala of the world wide web, we have the chance to create harmony or disharmony; to generate love or hatred, peace or war. For me it's not even about karma (turning up in the next life as a manky cockroach) or catholic guilt (burning in hell for one's sins), it's just about an aspiration to mindfulness.

On Friday two of my fellow Graces and I took the bus to Fuschlsee. There, about a quarter of the way round the lake, we found paradise. From a rock we slipped naked into the water. Centimetre by delicious centimetre we let the cool nibble at our bodies and wrap us in the comforting tingle of it's wetness. Then we swam into the profound blue silence and drank the sky.

As my arms dipped in a slow chaconne in and out of the water, I felt I could indeed move mountains if I could stay with this sense of peace in the place where woman and nature meet.........

Then the world came back to challenge us:

The man in the next cove stood watching us and masturbating for two hours. Eventually I threw a rock to scare him off.

On my return I put the pictures of the three of us, beautiful in our nakedness, on to Flickr. In the three minutes between downloading them and setting them as private I received up to twenty-one pervy comments on each. I have no idea who has used them for what, how many copies have been made or where the pornographic ring - if there is one -will end.

I am trying not to engage with feelings of anger. I am trying instead to hold beloved a moment no-one should be able to take away from us.