Month: March 2020

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All for what?

Lambeth Bridge from Millbank, London

I didn’t go to the beach to photograph the sunrise, though I was awake in time to get there.

Instead I lay in bed, as I do, thinking.

And then it was seven o’clock, and then it was eight o’clock, and I was still lying there. And I thought how pointless everything is, and wouldn’t it be better to just let go, let everything go and stop trying to find reasons to stay alive?

All these stupid tasks I’ve been setting myself, like doing yoga and tai chi and meditation in my spare room, and writing 500 words. All for what? To make me think I’m doing something worthwhile with my days? All that self-bullying that I usually put into getting myself to leave the house I’m now focussing on creating a ‘structure’ for my life (though not on housework, no, never on that). And I resent it just as much, and find reasons for telling myself how pointless it all is, nobody’s making me do it but myself, so why shouldn’t I just lie in bed all day hating myself and feeling miserable, because that feels like the easiest and most natural thing in the world. After all, it’s what I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, why change the habits of a lifetime? And now there’s no one to judge me for it but myself (and anyone who happens to read this, of course).

Someone said in a private message last week that I ‘torture’ myself. Well, why not? Maybe I deserve it. Maybe it’s all I know how to do.

While I was sitting on my cushion I thought about being on Millbank, upriver from Tate Britain, leaning on the wall and looking at the river and the new spring shoots on the plane trees, unfurling between the bobbles of last year’s seeds. I feel as though I have been there many times on lovely spring days taking photographs in the sunshine, and later crossing Vauxhall Bridge and going to the café which I can never remember the name of, but it’s also an antique showroom, and sitting outside drinking coffee surrounded by quirky statuary and old garden equipment, hiding from the noise and stink of buses. I’ve been going there for years, but I know it was still there last summer (maybe not the next time I go though, if there is a next time).

Hiding and running away are two sides of the same coin – yes, yes, I know, I know, I repeat myself, keep churning out the same old nonsense time after time. So why can’t I repeat the ‘good’ stuff? How the f*ck do I know? I don’t have control over what pops into my head. It’s all just bollox anyway, whatever I say.

I was planning to venture out again when I run out of milk – which will probably be today, or maybe I can stretch it out till tomorrow. Fact is, I don’t really want to any more.

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Any Normal Monday

I didn’t see the sun rise from the beach this morning – too late, I didn’t wake up till 7. Maybe another day.

I did do my half hour of combined yoga, tai chi and meditation before breakfast. It worked well. The mornings are filling up.

On any normal Monday, I would aim to leave home by 8 and walk to the leisure centre on the seafront. The pool closes at 9 for the parent and toddlers session, so I try to get there before about 8.30 or it’s not worth it. I could drive, but I’d have to faff around getting parking places at the pool, in the town centre, and back at home, and, honestly, I’d rather walk.

Which reminds me, my steps per day must have gone down massively.

I swim for about 20 minutes, then sit in the steam room for about another ten. Then shower, wash hair, dress, dry hair, go out and lean on the sea wall for a while. Some weeks over the winter, it’s been the only time I’ve been near the sea, these Monday mornings. Then I walk to the town centre, to a particular café where I have a bacon sandwich on granary bread, with brown sauce, and a pot of tea for one. I do killer su doku while I wait for my sandwich, drink tea and watch the world go by through the window. Then to the library for 11, where I buy a coffee and meet up with my writing buddies. Sometimes I even write, or more recently, edit (not my work though, a book I’ve been working on for a client – the one that I’m currently designing the cover for). Before Christmas (in the ‘black Friday’ sale, though I hate to admit it) I bought myself a notebook computer, so that (in theory) I can be more productive during these sessions.

About 1 o’clock, we start to disperse (the last two weeks I went I was the only one who turned up anyway), and I either walk home, or catch the bus. The bus also takes me back past the seafront, though only a small part of the way. I might pop into the co-op or the health food shop on my way home from the bus stop, if I need anything. At home I potter around till 3, when it’s time for the daily drama on Radio 4 extra, and crochet – usually yesterday’s square for my weather blanket. At 4 I’ll get an early dinner, veggie or at most pescatarian, because I have yoga in the evening. At 6 it’s 4 Extra again, and I get ready for yoga so I can listen to A Good Read at 6.30 so that I’m (in theory) ready to leave at 7, though always lose something, – cushions, water bottle, keys, money, coat – it starts officially at 7.15, but when I’ve got everything together it takes me two minutes to walk round the corner.

That is, any normal Monday.

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Knife Edge

This morning I added ten minutes of tai chi to my ten minutes of yoga and ten minutes of meditation. Now that the beds have been dismantled (not anticipating any visitors any time soon), there’s room in the spare bedroom/meditation room to do the first four moves to the four directions, and mostly for the rest of the moves I know so far, with a bit of adjustment. So the routine from tomorrow (because I did all the tai chi today at the end as an afterthought) will be: 5 minutes stretching/standing postures; 5 minutes tai chi to the four directions; 5 minutes for the rest of the form; 5 minutes floor stretches; 10 minutes meditation. It sounds like quite a lot but it’s not so much really. I started the yoga routine when I was in Prague and had a big room but hardly any furniture – or maybe before then, when I had the flat in Ramsey – anyway, I’ve never been consistent. When I was having chemo in 2017 I started again with a scaled down version that was mostly stretches and lying on the floor.

Now the clocks have changed, and sunrise is an hour later (by clock time), it occurs to me that the next few weeks are the best time for sunrise walks on the beach – added advantage being that there’s less likelihood of contact with other people. When I first moved here and was living in the flat on Beach Road, it was so close – 2 minutes up the road and then through the Rock Gardens – that I went all the time. Now there’s a 10 minute walk past boring houses before I get to the park, it’s not so appealing. That first summer was quite idyllic now I look back on it – that wonderful sense of getting away from the past and starting again (again!) but this time with the sense of finally finding the place where I needed to be, a place which was exciting and new, but where I could see myself staying for the long term, without a future where I would have to go back, or move on to somewhere else. A place where I could make a home – and have – more comfortably and easily than I would once have thought possible.

It’s been nearly five years, at the end of next month. I was asked a few months ago to choose: past, present or future? I replied: future, because if you expect the future to be worse than what went before, why bother carrying on? Now the future is confused and uncertain, hard to see, but that’s always the case, for each of us individually but also collectively. Throughout our lives we walk on a knife edge between what has happened and what might happen next. Though we may feel secure and comfortable in our certainties, none of us knows for sure whether we will see the sun rise tomorrow.

So tomorrow I will go and find it. Maybe.

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Paradoxes

If nobody reads what I write, have I been wasting my time?

Question which arose from a comment I received yesterday, pointing out that I keep repeating myself, suggesting that maybe I should try writing things that other people might find interesting, and offering an idea of how to do that. I replied that it was an excellent idea and he should try it, but I might just decide not share my writing any more.

I also realised that someone who was commenting earlier in the week telling me how wonderful I am might just have been taking the piss, and I got quite angry, not so much at him but at myself for not noticing at the time and responding in a suitably cutting fashion. Gremlins again – Gremlin 2 getting angry because Gremlin 1 didn’t step in and sort him out. Or maybe it did, and that’s why I didn’t hear a peep out of him yesterday.

Oh, the paradoxes of wanting people to take notice and then getting annoyed when they do. Or, probably more accurately, wanting to be anonymous and invisible and then being disappointed when they don’t notice.

Well, here I am again, shouting into the void. It is paradoxical though, I admit that. Why write about my deepest thoughts and feelings and then share it where it can potentially be read by anyone in the world (or anyone with internet access)? My usual answer is that I never expect anyone to read it, so it doesn’t matter, but then why bother at all, why not leave it where no one can read it but me? There’s a long and respectable history for that kind of writing.

I guess I keep coming back to this because there was a time when the people I met and the things that I shared in a blogging space had consequences in the real world which genuinely did change my life in fundamental ways. Of course, I have no way of knowing how my life would have been if I hadn’t met those people and done those things, but I can be sure, for example, that I wouldn’t be living where I live now – and that has made all the difference to the future I was anticipating, say, fifteen years ago – though there might have been other alternatives that would have turned out ‘better’, who knows?

So I am here, and I’m writing still/again, and maybe it’s because somewhere inside me I’m still looking for that flash, that transformation into another self, the portal into another world, the rabbit hole or wardrobe that will flip the dimensions, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood, the Crystal Space where all is potential and decisions must be made blindly, the ‘fast running rivers of choice and chance’ (David Crosby, ‘Delta’). The micro-choices that we make every day that can affect our lives and those of others – as the current situation reminds us only too well. Life is fragile. Writing is important.

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Gremlins

Here I am again. Today I feel overwhelmed with the pointlessness of it all. I suppose a week isn’t that long. I said last Friday that I would keep doing it ‘for as long as it takes. As long as what takes? I guess if I don’t identify a ‘goal’, how will I know if I’ve achieved it? And a week is nothing. In the grand scheme of things.

There are things I have to do today – nothing that awful, just stuff beyond sitting in the sunshine, listening to the radio or crafting. Or writing blogs. So the gremlin on my shoulder says: ‘why bother? Who’s keeping tabs on you? Nobody but you. Tell that bitch to go and…’

‘Okay, okay’ I say. ‘I get the point. No need to share that sort of language on my blog.’

I’d forgotten about the gremlin. I was flicking through ‘Single to Sirkeci’ the other day – can’t remember why, it was something to do with checking the layout related to another book I’m designing for a third party. And the gremlin caught my eye. I seem to remember it came in quite early on but I dropped it and don’t refer to it much later in the book. Shame, because it’s quite a good idea. Every time I want to write about what I really feel, my deep, dark, nasty feelings, I should just say: ‘the gremlin says…’ or turn it into a bit of dialogue.

But reading back what I’ve just written, I realise the gremlin has two aspects. The one I mentioned above is the one that says: ‘f*ck it, f*ck them all’ (but without the asterisks). The cynical, vicious, nihilistic one. Then there’s its alter ego, the judgemental one: ‘just get on with it, set those goals, do those chores, you worthless piece of crap. Enough with the whining self-pity, you know why nobody loves you? It’s because you don’t deserve it, you have to earn love, you don’t do that by moaning about how miserable you are.’ Ooooh, I think I prefer the first one.

‘Celebrate your achievements’ says some non-gremlin – or maybe just a more subtle, and hence more powerful, gremlin. ‘You’ve blogged every day for a week, and you’ve nearly done it again, so you have 4000 words – at that rate, you’ll have a novel by the end of May!’ Or maybe not.

‘You’re “pantsing” again’ says Gremlin 2. ‘It’s a week since you did that online meeting, and you downloaded the handouts and have you filled in the table yet? Of course not, you’re an incurable “pantser”, and that’s why everything you write is – well – pants! You go through the motions, you go to the workshops, and still you don’t get your finger out and do anything worthwhile. Do you seriously think that writing this bullshit every day is achieving anything? You’re just deluding yourself…’

‘… except you’re not really, are you?’ pipes up Gremlin 1. ‘You know perfectly well you might as well give up.’

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Fifteen percent

If you’re reading this and find it interesting, I have a request – please, if you can spare the time, go back and read at least from the start of this week, because I suspect my ramblings don’t make much sense if you don’t know the context, and, although I do admittedly repeat myself quite a lot, I am also trying to build on and make allusions to what I’ve said before.

Of course, this writing is mostly for myself, and I don’t anticipate anyone else reading it, or even understand why anyone would want to. It’s an exercise in trying to understand and hopefully learn to accept, maybe even love, myself, though god knows my efforts to do so over the last fifteen years don’t seem to have got me very far. In the past I’ve defined faith as: ‘continuing to believe in something against all evidence to the contrary’, and I’ve taken a leap of faith (it is leap year, after all) in throwing my thoughts out into the void, where theoretically they are accessible by all, although in practice only a handful of people ever bother to read them (which is just as well really, I’m not sure I want people I bump into every day – well, not at the moment, obviously, but any normal day – to be aware of all this stuff – which begs the question – why do it at all? And that’s a whole other can of worms for a whole other day).

What I’m saying is, if you do read this, I hope it’s not just because you like my quirky way with words, but that you understand that behind the words is a person who at times is genuinely struggling to get through life. I’m not saying this to ask for pity, or advice, just maybe a little respect (just a little bit!)

I’m limiting the length of my posts to 500 words a day, whereas I used to write 500 minimum. That’s an arbitrary limit I’ve set myself because I don’t want to end up going down rabbit holes and spending hours over the thing – and also because, I just thought it would be interesting to do it that way. It does mean that I won’t always reach a resolution – or even get to the point – on any one day, which is all the more reason to go back and see where these thoughts have come from and to follow where they’re going.

I’ll end the way I intended to start, with a comment from an email I received from an old friend last night: ‘…you don’t half think a lot. You think more than anyone I know. Please my dear Linda, give your mind a rest sometimes. Be calm, be still.’

I do try to be calm and still, but I’ve never understood how it’s possible to silence that constant inner narrative, until recently I assumed that everybody’s mind worked that way, but I’ve been told it’s approximately fifteen percent.

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Going out (or not)

I need to sort out this morning routine a bit better. Yoga, let cat out, make coffee, feed cat, take meds… this blogging gets pushed further and further back. Factor in shower, getting dressed and breakfast and it gets even worse.

This doesn’t look like a street in lockdown. Yesterday I told myself it was quieter than usual, but today I’m not so sure. Or maybe I just caught the rush hour. It’s gone quiet again now.

I left yesterday’s post to be continued, because I strayed off the point. What was that? Ah yes, my hermit tendency, the desire to hunker down, hide away, not have to engage with anybody from the outside. So you might think this situation is ideal for me, that I’m perfectly adapted? Ah, but the problem with that is that I know it’s not healthy. I fall into these patterns of dark thoughts, of the kind I sometimes share on here.

Sometimes I fight it by curling up, listening to the radio (telly is just for evenings, as far as I’m concerned, and there’s always loads of good stuff to listen to on BBC Sounds), su doku, crafts. Actually, crafts can be a bit of a two-edged sword – if it’s something I’m confident with, like crochet or knitting or cross stitch, it’s usually fine, but other things, like card making, lino printing and drawing, or (perish the thought) trying something new, I get so frustrated by my inadequacy and disappointed by the results (and don’t tell me that the results ‘don’t matter as long as you’re enjoying yourself’, because what’s to enjoy when you know you’re just making crap?) And if it’s inherently messy (or I make it messy by pulling everything out and leaving it over the table) it’s doubly depressing because I can’t be arsed to put it away and I can’t be arsed to try and I don’t know what to do and I ask myself, what’s the point?

So, what do I do instead? Despite my inherent reluctance, I force myself to go out and ‘do stuff’, maybe even ‘be with people’. However, even when it’s as non-threatening as going for a walk, I still have to psych myself up, bully myself into going, worry about what I need to take, look for things that I need that I can’t find (like phone, keys, wallet), tell myself a million times it’s not worth the effort and I’ll just skip it this once. Despite the fact that I know, once I get out there, I’ll probably feel better than staying at home (though not always, or maybe that’s just another excuse).

Which is why I join things, set myself up with routines, week after week, to go places and do things at certain times on certain days. And if there isn’t a specific activity, sometimes I make myself go out, find a cafe, sit with my su doku or kindle or whatever and watch the world go by. Not any more.

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Lockdown

So Britain is officially locked down today – for a minimum of three weeks, after which, who knows? My car is booked in for its MOT today (due in two weeks, but I was expecting to be on holiday from Friday week and wanted it done before then). But now I won’t be using it anyway.

Still seeing people walking and cycling in the streets – about half a dozen since I first sat here, about 10 minutes ago. Admittedly, the instructions don’t really seem that clear – and how are they going to be enforced? Feeling a little guilty now that I went for a walk on Sunday, though I don’t think I got that close to anyone, I keep thinking: should I have stepped onto the grass in the Rose Garden to pass that extended family who were on the path?

In all the stuff I’ve read about self-isolation and social distancing over the last couple of weeks, my first thought has been: welcome to my life – I’ve tried to resist saying it because it sounds whingey (see yesterday’s post).

All my life, I’ve never been the sort of person who needed to be ‘…where the people are…’ – unless there are so many of them that I’m not forced to engage, and can pass between them unnoticed, anonymous and invisible. That’s one of the reasons why I’m so happy when I’m travelling. Ever since childhood – for as long as I can remember – ‘friendship’ has always been a bit of an awkward concept for me – if you think I’m your friend, then I guess I must be, but I’ll always wait for you to make the first move – I don’t go out and ‘make friends’, I have to know that I’m liked by somebody else before I can decide whether there’s any point in me trying to be sociable with them That sounds arrogant, but it’s not really, quite the opposite – it’s because I assume that I am invisible and no one is going to take any notice of me, so why try and set myself up for rejection? There have been times in my life when I’ve lived without friends at all, or only ones that have imposed themselves on me – though most of those were when I was married.

I have now wandered away from what I was intending to say, though it is related. My normal inclination is to stay home and not risk going out and encountering anyone. Seriously, the converse of the anonymity of travel for me is the anonymity of staying put – that probably sounds a bit nonsensical, but I know what I mean. Being alone in my house, I am safe from having to interact with people, and from the possibility of being judged. The oddity of this is that when I do have to interact with people, I sometimes end up being happier than I would be on my own – partly from the relief that I’ve done it and it wasn’t that bad… tbc

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Cycle of Emotions

Are human emotions just illusions that conceal the deep heart of everything? Or are they the deep heart of ourselves?

I think: if I didn’t fight it every moment of every day, I would cry every moment of every day.

This morning I did something I’ve been thinking about for a while, restarting my morning routine of 10 minutes yoga followed by 10 minutes meditation. And the above two paragraphs are the thoughts that came into my head at the end of that time. Which some might say is an indication that yoga and meditation in the morning are not a good idea for me.

Yoga, meditation and writing 500 words first thing in the morning are very old habits, tried many times, discarded many times. In the quiet street outside my window I spot the occasional vehicle, the occasional jogger. Sunlight illuminates the top storeys of the red brick houses opposite; the bottom storeys shadowed by the terrace that includes the house where I sit at my computer.

The bucket has brought up some odd thoughts from the ‘writing well’ this morning, not at all what I was expecting to write about when I sat down, or planned yesterday evening when I thought about writing this morning. Maybe I’m getting back into the swing of this.

I don’t want this blog to turn into a whine-fest. That’s what I was thinking yesterday, when I walked by the sea. I can’t let it degenerate into a mire of self-pity, it’s too public for that. And I freely acknowledge that on most scales that mean anything in this everyday world, I have far less cause for self-pity than many people – most, even. Maybe I could even offer it out as something that might help others, a way of showing them: this isolation isn’t so bad, this lack of structure and excess of choice over how to fill the time, can be survived, can be dealt with and got through – look at me, welcome to my life. All those good, strong, positive people out there who are putting their efforts into making this situation better for others – that may sound sarcastic, but it’s not intended as such, I admire people like that, I really do, but I’m not brave enough to count myself among them. And if I tried, I’d only f*ck up whatever I tried to do – that’s my lame, selfish, mealy-mouthed excuse.

Self pity or self compassion? How do you tell the difference between the two? The former evolves rapidly into its close correlatives, self-disgust and shame. Ah yes, shame, the driving force of my vicious emotional circle – I am ashamed of myself for not being a better person, and that makes me angry and frustrated with myself, and that makes me unhappy which makes me sorry for myself which makes me more ashamed which makes…

Is this cycle of emotions an illusion that distances me from the deep heart of everything? Or is it the deep heart of myself?

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Shopping in Interesting Times

Okay, it’s now day three of writing something every day and…  I need to think of something cheerful to say, because we all need that right at this moment, right? Well, it’s lovely and sunny, I’m looking out the window behind my monitor and thinking: ‘I should go to the beach, walking to the beach will make me feel better’ but then I’m also thinking: ‘there’s loads I can do here that will also make me feel better’. There’s always great drama on Radio 4 and 4 extra on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, so get everything else done and out of the way now, and then spend some time on my chair in the bay this afternoon, crocheting or weaving with all that lovely afternoon sunshine coming in the window behind me, and Miko purring on the chair arm, or on the windowsill watching the world go by.  

I was going to say something about shopping. I live within five minutes walk of ‘local’ Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Co-op, health food shop, greengrocers, pharmacy and pet shop, and as they’re all so close I tend to just pick up what I need as and when, rather than doing a regular main shop – anyway, as I walk, I can’t carry too much at once, and sometimes it pushes me into going out on a day when I wouldn’t otherwise bother. At the beginning of the week nothing was noticeably different about any of them, though odd things started to go missing – eggs, for example, and potatoes (I bought sweet potatoes instead). Yesterday I went into the Sainsbury’s Local for the first time since Monday, and was shocked at how much things had changed in those few days. Where have all the fruit and veg gone? It’s not as though those are things that can be easily stored – unless you cut them up and freeze them, of course. I managed to get a bunch of under-ripe bananas, but there were no oranges.

Makes me think about how fragile our supply chains are if things can get this bad so quickly. Also, it has to be said, not a great sign for what’s likely to happen a few months down the line when current trading arrangements come to an end, and who the hell knows what’s going to happen then, when we’re still trying to manage the aftermath of… well, the aftermath. Talk about a double whammy.

Ah well, I was going to try and be cheery and upbeat.

I’ve started (for the third time) reading ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantell. It is a big beast of a book, hard to notice at first when you read something on Kindle. I’m glad I don’t have to hold the whole thing in my hand to read it. I’m getting into it now, just read the passage about how Cromwell’s wife died suddenly from a ‘summer plague’ and the household went into isolation afterwards. Almost 500 years later, are we really any better at dealing with crises?