Month: September 2020

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Leaf Upon the Water

Poem today. Not sure why. Sometimes it happens like that. Feels like this is the first one in a while

The photo was taken in the water lily house at Kew Gardens in 2015. The flowers and small leaves in front are lotuses, the large leaves behind are from giant water lilies. I was tempted to use a photo of a water lily from my old garden pond, but thought some smart Alec might point out that it wasn’t actually a lotus (that’s the sort of thing I’d do, anyway).

Also ‘The lotus flower grows from shit’ is only one of many interpretations of the mantra ‘Om mane padme hum‘ but it was the one explained to me by my first meditation teacher, and it makes for a great metaphor.

Leaf Upon the Water

The lotus flower grows from shit,
the silt of a thousand fishes, living
and dead, their shimmering scales,
dulled and darkened,
sinking through the cloudy waters
to the home of the scuttling things,
sliding into and becoming
the black, unspeakable ooze
that clings and clods
and welcomes into its bitter embrace
the scattered seed
that cracks and bleeds
in its agony of birth,
sending its silvery roots into the darkness
to trap the rotting death-food and to grow
new life that rises,
green and fecund
to break the surface,
unfurl its leaves
and open its lovely face towards the sun.

I am the leaf upon the water,
held in the magic of the meniscus,
I will not struggle
I will trust the power of the water,
I will lie back and let it hold me
until my season is done.

Om mane padme hum.
The lotus flower grows from shit.

Linda Rushby 30 September 2020

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Another Monday

Yesterday I had a horrible day. I spent most of it crocheting, but for once it didn’t make me feel happy, just guilty because I knew I was just doing it to fill the time and avoid all the more important things I probably should be doing to sort out the house. Also I had some phone calls to make, which I always dread (I did one, to the vet, but not another, to cancel something which is costing me money and I need to stop it). And I was expecting a ‘phone consultation’ with the breast cancer nurse, about my next 6 monthly infusion at the hospital. The one in April was cancelled, and if that had gone ahead this should be the last one, but I asked her and apparently it’s based on number (six times), not time (three years), so I’ll have to have another one next spring as well. Anyway, this one is on Saturday, and I knew about it because I’ve had the appointment letter since April.

I always have to get blood tests beforehand, and usually there’s a walk-in service at the hospital. But what I hadn’t realised until I spoke to the nurse is that now I have to make an appointment. Also she asked if I’d arranged a covid test, but I knew nothing about it being required. She said it should have been mentioned in the letter, and I wondered if it had been, because I hadn’t reread it, but when I said the letter came in April she said ‘well it wouldn’t have been then’ in that sort of fussy way that some people have that makes everything sound as though it’s your fault and you should have known. She’s not the same nurse I met when I was having the original treatment in 2017, and I didn’t recognise her name, but I know the drill now, or thought I did, till this year. She gave me a number to call to book a test at the hospital for Wednesday, and also suggested I call the blood-test centre and get the appointment there close to the same time, so I wouldn’t have to make two trips to the hospital. So I made those two phone calls and got both tests sorted for tomorrow.

If you’re thinking either: ‘That doesn’t sound too bad’ or ‘Poor you, that sounds horrible’, I should say that my bad mood was not related to having to make these extra appointments (though they didn’t help), but I’d been feeling it all morning as well. So much so that I was trying to find excuses to get out of going to yoga in the evening, but I made myself do it, and felt much better for doing so, which I knew I would, but still… It did help, and now I’ve made a commitment with the teacher that I will definitely go next week and she has put me on the list, so I can’t back out.

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Plus Ҫa Change

New day, new week. Almost a new month. Sunny but chilly.

Found out over the weekend that my local swimming pool won’t be reopening. When I moved to Southsea it was on my doorstep, and I started going in the mornings, then having a bacon butty and pot of tea afterwards at the local seafront café. When I first moved from the flat into this house, I stopped because it seemed too far to walk and I didn’t want to drive there. Then in spring 2018, after I’d finished my cancer treatment, I started going again, walking (it was only 20minutes away) first thing in the morning, only once or twice a week. The café had changed hands, but everything else stayed the same, and I would come out of the pool and stop for a few moments on the prom watching the sea and filling myself with love for this place. Then my writers’ group started meeting at the library on Monday mornings, so I would walk from the seafront into the town centre, and in the process found another café for breakfast. During that time, first John Lewis and then Debenham’s closed down, and our Sunday meetings moved from Debenham’s café to the library as well as the Monday ones.

I’ve lived in Southsea for well over five years now – in this house for four years next month. To me, it doesn’t feel very long, but in that time, so many of the things that I felt made the place special have gone or changed – of course, this year has accelerated that, but many went before that – in fact, of the things listed in the previous paragraph that have now changed or gone, only the pool and the second breakfast café (the one in the town centre) have closed as a direct result of the lockdown – and both were already in financial difficulty – this has just been the final blow.

Places change – that’s how it is. The sea is still there, and the park, I can walk there whenever I wish. Most of the people I’ve met over five years are probably still here, even if I’ve lost touch with them.

I came here intending to start a new life, and I’ve done that in many ways, and I guess I can do it again, even if so many things and places I treasured/took for granted have now slipped into memory (like riding my bike over the Common in that first summer and having coffee overlooking the harbour, watching the Isle of Wight ferries and other boats coming in and out – and when the weather got colder I started going swimming instead). I’d come out of a period when there was very little stability in my life, and the future had always seemed fluid and unknowable. Well, I guess that’s always true, but the human heart likes to kid itself that it isn’t.

I didn’t know when I sat down that this is what I would write today.

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Log Cabin

Very late this morning – although I’ve been awake for two and a half hours already. I decided to start doing my half hour yoga etc in the mornings again, and had a shower and washed my hair, and just generally time passed as it so often does.

Routines, as I’m sure I’ve said before, are both constraining and liberating. I half thought last week that I wouldn’t restart these two morning routines – exercise and blogging – but that’s because I was in a pretty shitty mood after returning from Cyprus. It’s so easy to slip down into chaos – especially for someone like me. Spontaneity can be exhilarating, but it can also be terrifying. Sometimes the chaos reaches a point where the only way I can deal with it is by ignoring it, and so it grows exponentially until it reaches a crisis and I fall apart emotionally. I was getting close to that point last week. But yesterday I wrote my blog; tidied the kitchen; loaded, ran and emptied the dishwasher; hoovered the stairs and landing – never really know what brings me back from the brink. I might say: ‘a decent night’s sleep’ but that wasn’t the case. Taking the van out on Friday? Doing that one, big(ish) stressful thing and then putting it to one side? Putting everything else into perspective? Maybe.

When I was learning to drive, the instructor told me that the greatest pleasure in life comes from doing something you really don’t want to do, and then afterwards, knowing that you’ve done it. Over forty years later, I think that’s still one of the wisest pieces of advice I’ve ever heard.

I’ve started a new crochet project – while still finishing off the previous one (both cardigans). I started following a pattern for what’s called a ‘log cabin’ design, starting with a small square, then every few rows rotating the work and picking up stitches along the edge of the existing work so that you have a rectangle that keeps growing – like a spiral growing out from the centre, but with straight edges. I’m using a ‘cake’ type yarn with large blocks of colour, and it looks pretty good. But I don’t like the shape of the pattern in the book – which makes a sleeveless waistcoat, which I’m not that keen on. So I’m trying to think of a way of adapting it to make a cardi with sleeves. This is the sort of thing I like to do – trying out something new and seeing how it works out.

Every so often I think I’ll give up on crochet, because it’s too repetitive and I feel like I’ve exhausted the possibilities. Then I get an idea like this and get interested again. Admittedly, I have cupboards full of projects that I’ve never finished, and garments that I’ve never worn. But I keep going back to it. And today I’m looking forward to sitting in the sunshine and trying again.

Maybe there’s a metaphor for life in there somewhere.

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Van Outing

After breakfast yesterday I decided that, despite what I’d said about self-isolation, I would take my van out for a run (one of those semi-commitments I’d made that I was talking about not wanting to face up to). The only brief encounters I had with other people was when I went into Sainsbury’s en route to the garage where I keep the van and bought picnic ingredients (wearing a scarf over my nose and mouth, naturally).

The guys at the garage (not the one where I keep it but the one where they fix it) had made me promise solemnly that I would take it out regularly and keep it running, now that they’ve not only replaced the battery (yet again) but fixed up a butterfly nut to make it easy to disconnect the battery every time I leave it. The problem last winter was that the previous new battery they’d installed was too tight for me to disconnect (even using a spanner) so I’d left it standing from November to January, and then, after they’d charged it, only took it out for a 10 mile drive up and down the seafront (I thought that would be enough but apparently it wasn’t), and it was dead again by the time I tried again in March. After that, we all know what happened, and I don’t think I should really be held responsible for that, but six months without being touched at all left the battery completely useless, so they had to replace it again.

Going out in the van is one of those things that you’d think should be a real pleasure, but I still have to psych myself up to do it. It’s not that I’m nervous about driving it as I used to be (except when it comes to reversing and parking), it’s just like everything else, it always feels like it’s going to be a hassle and I’d rather just stay at home.

But it’s been on my mind that I need to take it out more regularly, so, as yesterday was bright and sunny – after a couple of rainy days – I thought I’d take it over to my favourite park on the South Downs, about twenty miles away. The pleasure of it is to park up, go for a walk, brew up a cup of tea or coffee, get out the camping chair and have a picnic. It’s not as if I couldn’t just do that in the car with hot water in a flask, but it feels like camping even if I then turn round and come home.

So that’s what I did – except that although I had tea bags, water, milk and camping stove, I’d taken all the cups out last time to put through the dishwasher and forgot to take one with me. It was windier and colder than I thought, and I hadn’t taken a coat, so didn’t feel like a walk. So I sat in the van and ate my sandwiches.

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Voluntary Self-Isolation

I’m not required to self-isolate, because Cyprus, having an extremely low infection rate, is one of the countries exempt from travel precautions as far as the UK government is concerned. (The attitude of the Cypriot government to people from the UK entering their country is somewhat different, hence the need for negative tests on the way in). But I’ve decided to do so voluntarily, because – well, basically because it’s a good excuse not to have to go out and interact with other people. And I have been mixing with a lot of people –not just on the plane, in the hotel and at the wedding, but also at Heathrow and on the trains and buses to and from it, so it’s a relief to spend a few days – even a couple of weeks – home alone with Miko again.

I was pretty much exhausted for the first three days – not sure why, because my sleep was no worse than it normally is, although there is a two hour time difference. On Wednesday I wrote something, but it was such a moany mess that I gave up and decided not to share it, while yesterday I didn’t even try. So here’s my effort for today.

On Sunday evening Laura was trying to persuade me to go up and stay with them for a few days, but it was really the last thing I felt like doing. I know that she wants me to see their new house -I want to see it too. And she kept saying: ‘we don’t know how long it will be before it’s possible again.’ I thought she meant because she’ll be back at work full-time from next week, but I’ve been thinking about it since. It’s true, we really don’t even know if Christmas together will be an option.

It feels as though the wedding and holiday has been a kind of watershed- for most of the year it seemed so uncertain that it wasn’t even worth thinking about, then when they came to visit at the end of July and I realised that she was still making plans (buying bridesmaids’ dresses etc) it felt more real, and then began the period of will it/won’t it? It’s caused so much uncertainty and stress that now it’s over, it’s both a relief, but also highlights how uncertain everything still is – and it’s brought back into focus the ways I spend (or waste) my time, the commitments I’ve made (or perhaps should be making) to myself and others, and my lack of motivation to do anything at all, the lack of purpose and satisfaction in my life.

Well, I’ve made a start – on the least threatening and stressful thing – bringing my finances up to date, checking my statements, filling in my spreadsheets. That’s the thing I always resort to when I want to feel as though I’m doing something useful. There’s always a ‘right’ answer, which I can find by checking and double checking, and it exercises my brain.

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Back Home, Reading and (Not) Writing

I was wrong about the equinox being yesterday, it’s today. I didn’t check. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel any more equable.

Yesterday I was tired all day – not surprising as I always feel that way the day after a long journey. So I didn’t push myself to do much, not even unpacking. Today I still feel tired, and I have a headache. That may be down to dehydration – on holiday I was careful to keep drinking plenty of water, but yesterday I didn’t bother. I feel slightly queasy as well, which may be because I didn’t eat much on Sunday. Yesterday I ate more like my normal amount of food – not as much as on holiday, more than when travelling. Actually, come to think of it, feeling queasy first thing is not that unusual.

Guess I’ll be tired again today though – largely due to reading from about half past three, when I first woke, to nearly six, finishing off the last book I’d been reading on holiday. Because that’s what I do on holiday: in the airport; on the plane; on the hotel balcony; on the sunbed; drying out in the sun after swimming; in the shade; flat on my belly with the sun on my back; in bed at night. There’s nothing really to stop me reading all the time when I’m at home – but for some reason I don’t.

Now I’ve finished my holiday reading, I’ve gone back to ‘Out of Sheer Rage’ which I mentioned a while back. It’s a very dippable book; quotable too. I picked it up again on the flight out. It’s as much fun as a novel, but not quite so obsessive in the sense of having to get to the end to find out what happens. Because nothing much does happen, there’s no plot as such, it’s just about trying and failing to write a serious book and in the process writing this rambly, chaotic, engrossing book – which may be why I like it so much. This morning, on the loo (forgot to mention that in my list of holiday reading places, though it’s my main one when at home), I read two things which really struck home, one about coming home after living abroad (which I highlighted and must try and share), and another about not being able to write when you have seven days a week to do nothing but, and thinking that maybe having a part time job would make one value one’s free time more and hence improve productivity.

Anyway, I was going to write more about reading and writing, and reading and not writing, but I’m running out of words. That sense you get when on holiday that you could really sit down and do it and write something worthwhile when you get home, and that that’s what you’re going to do, really put your back into it at last. Which is great, until you actually get home and realise there’s not a hope in hell.

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Equinox – Back Home

Equinox. Equanimity, equability, equilibrium? Time to restore all those things? (though I’m not sure if the second is a real word, and if so, how it differs from the first. To be ‘equable’ is to have ‘equanimity’. But the rule of three prevails.)

Miko has made it plain she wants me to come on the computer. So here I am/we are, she on the desk, currently looking out of the window, with her tail caught up between the last two fingers on my left hand

Arrived home at nine-thirty last evening, after a fairly stressful – because not very well planned – journey back from Heathrow (bus to Woking; another bus to Guildford; train to Fratton; then taxi home). By asking for advice from real people, not trying to find it online, I avoided the rail-replacement bus most of the way and the connections worked like a dream.

And as for the holiday and wedding, booked over a year ago, almost cancelled the first time when Thomas Cook went out of business, but reorganised through the efforts of the bride (my daughter) negotiating directly with the wedding planner and the hotel and rebooking the flights (which were changed again as recently as a couple of weeks ago, from Gatwick to Heathrow). Then this strange spring and summer, of not thinking about it – at first because it seemed so far in the future, too far to worry and plan on it ever happening, not knowing what the situation would be by the middle of September, whether there would be relative freedom of travel or we’d be back into the second wave by then (never seriously thinking it would ‘all be over’ in time). Then Cyprus opened to British tourists from 1st August, on condition of getting a negative covid test within 72 hours of flying, and it started to seem like it might happen after all – so then all the stress and panic of having to prepare for maybe going or maybe not going, and that awful last week of having to organise the tests and not knowing until the day before we left that I was actually going.

After all that – it could have been a massive anti-climax. It wasn’t. Wonderful hotel in a fabulous location, lazy days of relaxing and swimming, playing with the grandchildren, watching them play, eating too much, drinking too much, walking on the seafront and reading in the shade. And a beautiful ceremony on Thursday, overlooking the sea; the bridesmaids (all seven of them, in ages from four to not quite ten times that) in blue, the bride in an elegantly simple cream dress, my little girl, so happy, after all her herculean efforts to keep this dream going. Feeling like minor celebrities in the massively under-occupied hotel, as total strangers among the fellow guests smile and say hello afterwards.

And now, back home, with unpacking and washing and Miko reminding me of my morning writing ritual, wondering what happens next, and where life goes from here.

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Splurging

Do I want to write today? Some of the stress I was under earlier in the week has been alleviated, I slept a bit better last night – 71% according to the sleep cycle app, but then it was 79% two nights ago, so doesn’t necessarily correlate with a good mood in the morning. I don’t know what those percentages are based on – is it percentage of a ‘normal’ night’s sleep – eight hours, maybe? When I first installed the app, it spent the first few days saying it was calibrating, so maybe it relates to how much sleep I had in those first few nights? Or is it a kind of index which also takes into account factors like frequency of waking in the night or proportion of deep to light sleep? Whatever, it’s never 100%, and very rarely over 90, so 79% is pretty good.

In checking my sleep, I got distracted onto Twitter and came across this quote:

“You can’t say, I won’t write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then… you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.”

Dorothy C. Fontana.

Hmmm – that’ll be me, then. No surprises there. I retweeted it anyway.

Is there any other activity/artform where you create so much ‘stuff’ just to throw it all away again? Another tweet from the same person’s feed:

‘To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over….”

John Hersey.

That’s not quite what I meant – I was thinking not of the early drafts that become something in the end, but what I do: writing for its own sake that never does and never will go on to become ‘something’ – not about perfection, but just ‘splurging’.

Incidentally, after I’d written the word ‘stuff’, I tried to think of a better word for the products of ‘creative’ effort, and I thought of ‘material’ – which reminded me that my Mum – who was trained as a seamstress– used to sometimes call fabric/material ‘stuff’ – oh the wonders of language!

Where have I got to? Not very far is the answer, but then I very rarely do.

I wrote about Tara Brach a couple of days ago. One thing I struggle with in her teachings is the idea that to manage your emotions you need to identify where they manifest physically in your body and focus on that. But emotions occur in the brain, surely? I’ve had this problem with other meditation teachers – I once raised it with the leader of a meditation group and he was really dismissive: ‘oh, so you think it’s all in your head, do you?’ in a tone that implied I was being deliberately obtuse. But although there are conventional physical reactions to some emotions – mostly concerned with changing the heartbeat or breath – isn’t saying that love comes ‘from the heart’ metaphorical? To be continued (maybe).

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Blame Game

By chance this morning, looking for something to read on my Kindle, I found a book I’d forgotten I had, by Tara Brach. In fact, I was apparently 25% of the way through reading it. She’s an American meditation/self help guru who was recommended to me by someone I met at a mindfulness retreat a few years ago. I watched/listened to a few of her videos on Youtube, and downloaded this book.

I needed something to read on the loo, so I read on from the point where it ‘opened’. It was an anecdote about Christmas dinner with her family, where every individual was being annoying for one reason or another. In a huff (she didn’t put it like that), she went out for a walk on her own in the snow, reflecting on this, and realised that while she was blaming them she was really angry with herself.

I finished on the loo and went to the kitchen, where the radio was playing Thought for the Day. The speaker was also talking about deflecting our own blame onto other people, and how we should face up to it and take responsibility (maybe not in those exact words). And I thought, well, that’s what I do all the time, isn’t it? I always take the blame onto myself, and like apologising, somehow it can make people even more irritated with me, and I with myself. What am I doing wrong?

My late mother-in-law used to say: ‘Everybody makes mistakes, but I try not to make the same mistake twice’, the implication being that you can’t be blamed for the first time, but you should learn not to repeat whatever it was that you did. Because if you do repeat it, you become culpable for failing to learn the lesson the first time.

I’ve taken a lifetime of blame, but I just keep on and on making the same mistakes. I’ve tried to learn the lessons, take responsibility, be a ‘better’ person – but there are aspects of myself which will never change no matter what I try to do – and I am trying to explore and accept them, because I’m tired of fighting against myself. It’s easy to get frustrated and irritated with the chaos of my life, but as long as it’s just me on my own dealing with the consequences, it’s not so bad as when it affects someone else, or there are witnesses, and I have to deal with their reactions, and my own reactions to them.

Yet at the same time I have this compulsion to ‘come out’, to explain myself, to be understood and accepted for who I am. Judge me if you must, but please try to judge me on my own terms, not by comparing me to the person you believe or want me to be (or think I ‘should’ be).

Perhaps all our perceptions are illusory, but my self-knowledge is based on a lifetime’s study, and – I think – deserves to be heard.