Category: self awareness

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Spitting into the Wind

Yesterday there was something in my head that I wanted to say, but I ended up saying something completely different, and thought I would save it for today. Then this morning I couldn’t remember what it was and started thinking on different lines. Then I got an inkling of that thing from yesterday, but not sure now if I want to say either of them.

In fact, I’ve just made the classic mistake of looking something up before continuing, and having wandered into and down the rabbit hole of Google and Wikipedia, I am even more confused. But I have discovered that although for years and years I have believed that Newton’s three laws were the same as the three laws of thermodynamics – they’re not. Bugger. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially if you only know the names and not what they actually mean.

However, on the subject of universal laws…

All living things must die, and everything must change (that’s where the three laws come in, but unfortunately not Newton, so I can’t use the quote: ‘God said let Newton be! And all was light’ which is by Alexander Pope, and the reason I was poking around the rabbit hole in the first place, because I couldn’t remember who said it).  

All living things must die. Everything must change. A flame only burns until it runs out of fuel (that’s what set me thinking about the three laws). And – spoiler alert – anyone who is listening to the current Quandary Phase of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Radio 4 extra should look away now – the Great God’s message to his creation is: ‘We apologise for the inconvenience’.

Any universal truth is fundamentally banal. (Who said that? Me. I don’t claim it to be original, but if I’ve stolen it I don’t know where from.)

It may be argued that true happiness means accepting the impermanence of all things and deciding that life is still worth living. On the other hand, maybe the route to true happiness is to stop thinking about all that bollox, be excellent to each other and party on dudes. Perhaps this is a fundamental difference between two types of people (the Cassandras and the Melindas) – or maybe (more likely, I’d say), there is a spectrum between the two, and we all find our own place.

Which has brought me back to the thing I was thinking about yesterday – or the bit I can remember – that for me, euphoria (Melinda) can’t be separated from existential despair (Cassandra). It’s over thirty years since I first sought professional help to ‘fix’ my psycho-emotional shortcomings, and the paradox is that any attempts to convince me that I’m ‘fine as I am’ miss the point that if I really was ‘fine’, I wouldn’t need to be convinced, I’d already know it. And if I’m not, any amount of wishing away that sense of ‘unfineness’ without accepting it as fundamental part of myself, is spitting into the wind.

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Chilli for Dinner

I had chilli for dinner.
The chilli was good.
I felt like a winner,
I knew that I should.

So I try and I try
and I fall down that hole,
and I cry and I cry
through this crack in my soul.

Linda Rushby 6 June 2020

Those first two lines popped into my head as I was making coffee (probably because the pan I cooked chilli in yesterday was still sitting on the stove). It came to me like a song, so I thought I’d write some more and that’s what happened. That’s what always happens when I write in rhyme. I think it needs some blues guitar behind it – or better still, to be buried in a deep, deep hole and quietly forgotten.

But the coffee’s good, and I’m drinking it from my ‘Enjoy the little things’ mug. (You can see the state of my desk hasn’t improved any). Miko is purring, the sun is shining, a (somewhat chilly) summer’s day lies ahead of me like a blank page from a posy hipster notebook, creamy white and unlined, waiting to be scrawled over and desecrated by a rubbish biro.

I have been trying to unravel why I am who I am, looking for a way to ‘fix’ myself before time runs out and I walk into that wall. How long might that be? Who knows? Could be today, could be another thirty years – neither of those is very likely, but neither is impossible.

I was thinking the other day about the old adage ‘…be careful what you wish for because it might come true…’ and all those cautionary ‘three wishes’ stories where the last wish has to be to undo the first two. I mean, how about being in a beautiful place and saying: ‘I wish I could stay here for the rest of my life’ and then a coconut falls from a tree, lands on your head and kills you instantly, or you try to be cunning and say: ‘I wish I could stay here for at least twenty years’ and you get arrested on a trumped up charge (or for a real crime) or grabbed by some psycho, and are imprisoned for twenty years? (Bugger, I’ve just given away the closest I’ve come to thinking of a plot for a short story in four years.)

Hmm, that’s not what I was going to write about at all. But on the same theme, when I moved in here I decided (and who doesn’t immediately after a big house move?) that this was the house where I’ll spend the rest of my life. Lately I’ve realised that that may not be possible – not because of any particular current concerns, but because who knows what might happen? But I think I’d like this to be the house I will live in for longer than any other in my life, which would be more than eighteen years (the time I lived with my parents) so that’s fifteen more years from now. That seems doable.

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Happy Days (Part 2)

In some ways these last few days have been quite idyllic. Wake up in sunshine, morning routine, breakfast in the garden – with su doku – blends effortlessly into sitting in the garden and crocheting, which blends into an afternoon of listening to the radio and crocheting, preparing dinner, eating dinner (sometimes in the garden), and watching telly for a couple of hours and crocheting, then listening to music and crocheting till it’s time for bed. Okay, yesterday I went to the shop, but that’s become more of a regular variation on the routine, rather than a major disruption.

These are the kind of summer days it’s easy to fantasise about in the winter, or on any cold, rainy or generally stressful days at any time of year, so I’m deliberately appreciating them and not taking them for granted.

The obsession with crochet could, of course, be something else, like reading, writing, su doku, gardening, cooking, weaving, cross-stitching, tapestry, jigsaws, drawing, painting, decorating, tidying… Why don’t I pour my heart and soul into any of those? It can be done, but at the moment I don’t feel drawn in any of those directions.

Is it because I find it easy? But that’s just practice. It doesn’t always work out. I’ve learnt to let it go, pull it down and try again, put it on one side and try something else, or shove it to the back of the cupboard and forget about it.

I guess that’s what I do with my writing as well – shove it to the back of the electronic cupboard and forget about it. And this morning it’s not working at all. The words don’t want to come. I am looking at specks of dust on my computer, looking out the window at the street (which still seems remarkably empty). Wandering round my head to see if I can pick up any scraps of thought that might be worth recording.

Emptying your head of thoughts is not a bad thing – I spend ten minutes every morning trying to do just that.

I’ve just remembered a moment from last night, just before midnight. I’d been sitting up too late crocheting and listening to music, and when I went into the kitchen, I remembered I’d left the door open for Miko, and she was still outside, so I stepped out into the garden. Despite the neighbours’ fairy lights and the still-illuminated windows, there was mystery out there, no moon (it’s too new) but a few stars in the stillness of the night air. I called her name, and heard her scraping the gravel before I saw her. It could have been any animal sound, but she came to me and jumped up into the patch of light on the steps and ran into the house. I thought of owls (though I hear none here in the town) and night and summer, and the cool air and the mysterious life of cats, and thought about a poem but it didn’t come.  

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The Hermit (Part 3)

I’ve been to Tesco. It was going to be Sainsbury’s, but when I got there there was a barricade across the door. I looked though the window but couldn’t see anyone inside – this was just after 8 and they normally open at 7. So I crossed the road to Tesco (again). When I came back, Sainsbury’s was open. Bit late by then.

Walking home, I started fretting about what it will be like when things start opening up again – whenever that may be. Yesterday evening I joined in with a Zoom meditation session from the group I used to go to on Sunday evenings. On Sundays now they have a Crowdcast with guest speakers, and are getting 200-300 people from all over the world connecting (or whatever the word is). The difference between that and Zoom is that the ‘viewers’ are not visible but can contribute through an online chat area, so I like that because it’s nicely anonymous. I do join in properly with the meditation, but during the talks I quite often sit crocheting, as I would if I was watching telly. On Zoom, it’s possible not to share your video and audio, but it’s a bit awkward when there are only half a dozen people involved, and not only that, but mainly people I recognise from the regular group (and who would presumably recognise me).

Anyway, the guy leading it mentioned in the chat afterwards that he has been quite enjoying the lock down, but felt guilty admitting it – the lady who led the session last week said something similar – and then we were all putting our hands up and agreeing, and saying what a relief to hear someone else saying it.

Now, there could be a whole complex of reasons behind this. To put a negative spin on it, maybe people who join meditation groups – more specifically, online meditation groups – are all geeky, introverted loners who want to hide from the world and keep away from people in general. On the other hand, maybe they are thoughtful, contemplative individuals, interested in learning to detach themselves from the materialistic pleasures to which we are all addicted to a greater or lesser extent, on a path to self realisation and acceptance of the world as it is.

In the fifteen years I’ve been actively pursuing this path, I’ve met both sorts of people – some who are in conventional terms ‘damaged’ in some way and some who are intellectually fascinated by the life of the mind and disillusioned by the modern world, and many (like myself) who are a combination of the two. I mentioned to a friend the other day that it’s noticeable how many people I’ve met in meditation groups are educated to PhD level – all disciplines, but I think it reflects a certain kind of thoughtfulness and curiosity. On the other hand, there are also a fair number of recovering addicts.

This feels like the start of an interesting chain of thought, to which I’ll return.

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Tai chi in the Garden

I’m not going to the shop today. This is a chain of events triggered because I made lasagne on Friday, which meant I used a pint of milk, which meant I ran out of milk early, so I started one of the cartons of long-life milk which I bought to make yoghurt, but also for emergencies; so I’ve still got plenty of milk so I don’t need to go to the shop today.

I opened the door to let Miko out into the garden. The sun was up, of course, but not shining through the clouds. I stepped out onto the steps that go down to what I laughingly call the ‘patio’, although it’s not paved, but gravelled, and if you poke through the gravel you’ll find compacted builder’s rubble – not that that deters the weeds.

There was no wind, and a blackbird was singing into the empty, quiet air – that beautiful, haunting sound, as though the space between the earth and clouds is hollow, and the music is an echo without a source.

On an impulse I kicked off my slippers and walked down the second lot of steps to the grassed area (I hesitate to call it a ‘lawn’, though I did mow it a few days ago, for the first time in weeks). I took a few slow, deep breaths then began my tai chi practice. Tai chi, as you may know, consists of a sequence of movements which is known as a form (or ‘the form’ for each specific tradition, though there are multiple traditions). As a beginner, you learn a small number of moves one at a time and gradually learn new ones as you perfect the earlier ones – so it is a challenge to the memory and concentration as much as the body. I started learning it towards the end of 2015, went for a year then took a break for most of 2017 after I started chemo. In 2018 I went to a beginners’ class with the same teacher, slowly worked my way up to the point I’d reached before, then added on more moves. It’s not unusual for the same class to have students at different levels, and I liked the class, it was convenient and suited me, and the teacher was happy for me to continue with them.

Since the start of lockdown, we’ve been doing Zoom classes on a Wednesday evening, usually only about six of us, at all stages. I’ve discovered that when the classes stopped, I’d reached a point just before a whole sequence of movements in the form is repeated, but I don’t know the connecting move before that happens. I’ve tried to pick it up from Zoom, but I know I’m fudging it. I should probably try and find it on Youtube.

I started writing about the garden, but ended up with tai chi. Both deserve a bit more attention, but this writing randomly is so much easier and more enjoyable than staring at the screen.  

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Somebody Else’s Problem

Today I think I will write about what I was planning to write about yesterday, before I was hijacked by a poem. But first I’d like to observe that the sun is shining, the gulls are flying past the window, the pigeons are woo-wooing, Miko is at her neighbourhood watch post and not bothering the keyboard, and for once it feels as though the day is off to a good start.

I used to joke that my mid-life crisis began when I started a PhD at the age of 38, and has continued ever since. I remembered that when I was sharing all those memories from Facebook at the start of May, and realised that, though I may still feel in crisis some days, it’s definitely no longer a mid-life one. So I started to ponder on when exactly that transition happened.

My first thought was – well – it must have been when I moved to Southsea in 2015 – that was a major break in my life, and marked the end of that period of rootlessness which had been ongoing since I split with my husband in 2009. But then I thought that my first months here were still part of that churning, the excitement of a new life, new place, new people, all that. Plus of course, the curse of the Madwoman in the Attic – the stuff that had been left behind in the old house, the emotional and physical baggage which had remained unresolved – was still hanging over me. That wasn’t sorted out till I moved into this house in autumn 2016 –that was the next significant point. But then what happened? Yep, 2017 – cancer year.

So now I think that when I look back over my life and mark it off into chunks, chapters of my autobiography, if you like (though this is the closest I’ll ever get to writing one), the present stage started at the beginning of 2018, when I began to pick up the threads of a life no longer dominated by concerns over my health. Comparing notes with my brother (who was treated for prostate cancer in that same year) and my therapist (who I started seeing in early 2018), I discovered that it’s a known condition for people who’ve survived cancer to experience depression after the treatment is over. For me, intellectualising it two years on, it’s about ‘what now?’ – the realisation that there was more future than I’d subconsciously been anticipating, and that finding things to do with it could be a challenge.

And – this has just popped into my head, and I have 70 words to express it in – being treated for cancer, travelling round Europe, being in lockdown – all have this in common: every day is just about itself. The future can be put to one side; maybe it will happen, maybe it will be somebody else’s problem. ‘None of the crazy you get from too much choice…’, no stress, no sweat.

Well, that’s something to talk about on Thursday.

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Corrections and Clarifications

The anger came back this morning, in the I-should-get-out-of-bed-but-not-yet time. I suppose it may have been partly triggered by the new uncertainty caused by images of commuters on trains and station platforms. However, as always, it was turned against myself. How can I keep writing about my real feelings and put it on show? How can I come on here and share my true thoughts, take that risk of being seen for who I am, all that self-pity and negativity and doubt? I’ll stop, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll give up again as I always do with everything.

But I got up and did my half hour practice, and when I went downstairs and made coffee I realised how valuable that is, that it actually does help – or something does. Routine and discipline, you see – it makes life possible. Which I guess includes this as well. Here I am at my keyboard with Miko on the desk beside me, supervising the street outside, both of us listening to a sudden outburst of gulls. Blue sky and sunshine, and I can’t really tell whether there are more people and traffic, though I can see that there are at least six empty parking places across the road whereas they’ve been full for the last few weeks, but I guess the consolation is that at least six drivers aren’t taking the bus.

I didn’t speak to my daughter yesterday, but I assume she for one hasn’t gone back to work. She’s not waitressing any more, but she still works in the leisure/hospitality business, her job involves visiting pubs, so I’m guessing she’s reprieved until they reopen. Anyway, she has two children at home.

I am still in my cosy bubble, for as long as it takes. I may never come out. I still feel that life is less stressful like this, but I keep panicking that eventually I will have to engage with the world again, and wonder what exactly that will mean. It’s like when I was travelling and would every so often get a reminder that, at some point, I would have to come back and face up to life again.

Just remembered that I have some corrections and clarifications for my quote from the Joni Mitchell song yesterday (I finally looked it up). The song is Barangrill and the corrections are: it’s three waitresses (not two); they’re talking about Singapore SLINGS (which makes so much more sense than ‘sleeves’, a mistake I’ve been making for almost 50 years), and there’s ‘not one ANXIOUS voice’ (I think I said ‘angry’).

So there you go, I’m not perfect (as if I ever claimed to be).

Oh my goodness, I just glanced through the window, (checking for swifts) and saw a plane flying over – it looks like a commercial airliner, rather than anything naval/military. Strange how something so familiar can disappear without being missed until suddenly it’s there again.

Check out Barangrill, if you like Joni. I hadn’t heard it in years.

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Routines and Decisions

Structure and chaos. Rules and freedom. Dyspraxia and social inadequacy – nature and nurture. Cats and husbands. This and that. Writing and not-writing.

I’ve been awake for two hours already, but I observe my routines. Time is open-ended – until 1pm, when the afternoon’s radio marathon begins (though I can delay that by setting the TiVo to Radio 4 Extra so that it can be paused and rewound if I miss anything). Little happens in the mornings beyond the routine of: feed cat; half hour yoga, tai chi and meditation; shower; coffee; blogging; breakfast (which can end up being at 11, or even later). Except for shopping days, of course, but that was yesterday. There are other day-related things, apart from shopping (which isn’t strictly day-related, but has fallen into that pattern because it takes me exactly a week to use up two litres of milk), like putting the bins out (Tuesday), Zoom tai chi (Wednesday), Skype therapy (Thursday), but they all happen in the afternoon or early evening.

This is very different from pre-lockdown routine, when on most days I needed to be up and ready to go out by a certain time. Which may mean – if those activities eventually resume in a similar format to before – that post-lockdown life (which, may I say, I’m not anticipating any time soon), will be different again.

None of which is what I was thinking about in those two hours before I sat down at the keyboard.

By the way, the Joni Mitchell song I quoted from the other day wasn’t ‘The Blonde in the Bleachers’, as I said, but the one that begins:

‘Two waitresses both wearing black diamond earrings
talking about zombies and Singapore sleeves.
No trouble in their faces, not one angry voice,
none of the crazy you get from too much choice,
the thumb and the satchel or the rented Rolls-Royce…’

Joni Mitchell

But surprisingly, even though I can now hear it clearly in my head, I can’t get as far as the refrain to remember what it’s actually called (nor do I have a clue what ‘Singapore sleeves’ are) – and I still haven’t got round to looking it up.

Choice as tyranny, that’s what I was going to write about. The comfort of routines versus the horror of being forced to make a decision. That’s why I cling to them in the mornings; though I don’t always wake – or get up – at the same time, the sequence of activities is quite consistent. Otherwise I lie in bed and do nothing – which is not, repeat NOT healthy for my emotional wellbeing.

I still have to make decisions, of course, and I find the two most terrifying are: what to wear, and what to have for dinner; terrifying because they are relentless. And every decision (however trivial) entails judgement: options must be evaluated, probabilities and utilities assigned; projected outcomes considered (especially unanticipated ones) in order to identify and attain an optimal solution.

It’s exhausting. Better to sit in the sun and drink coffee.

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Thinking About Thoughts and Other Stuff (tbc)

How can you tell the difference between denial and acceptance?

How can I learn to control my thoughts?

No, I don’t like the word ‘control’. How can I learn to cope with, manage, ride the waves of my mind? ‘Manage’ is also too strong. Manage the way I react to the vagaries of my mind? But what is there to do the ‘managing’ if not my mind? What is my ‘mind’ anyway?

I like the idea of riding the waves. I’ve never tried surfing, never even felt a desire to, but I enjoy the sensation of floating on waves – I also like riding in a hot air balloon (an experience I’ve had three times in my life and would happily do again). A balloon pilot or surfer (or sailor, wind-surfer, hang-glider, glider pilot etc) cannot control the movements of the wind and/or waves, but can control the behaviour of his or her craft in response to the conditions that it’s experiencing.

I did something sneaky earlier by referring to ‘thoughts’ in the second paragraph then going on to talk about ‘mind’. What’s the difference? Is it that my thoughts are equivalent to the wind and waves, and is my mind the sum total of all those thoughts, or is it the mechanism I use to ‘manage’ them? Isn’t it both at the same time? Not only that, but if the ‘management’ I’m referring to is about choosing the best responses to the thoughts that arise, what do those responses consist of? Okay, sometimes they may be physical, like getting a drink in response to the thought ‘I’m thirsty’, but don’t they also involve thoughts, at least initially?

Ah well, I’ve just done another sneaky thing (or my ‘mind’ has done it without me noticing at the time) by introducing the word ‘choosing’. How much choice do we have over our responses? Choice is the essence of freedom, but it is also a tyrant (‘…the crazy you get from too much choice/the thumb and the satchel or the rented Rolls-Royce…’ Joni Mitchell, I think it’s from The Blonde in the Bleachers).

That’s what I was thinking of when I sat on the edge of my bed an hour or ago, the comfort of routine versus the panic of having to make a decision. Should I go straight to the shop and get cat food, or give Miko the only stuff we have left, which is a choice between meat in jelly (bought by mistake) which she refuses to eat, or fish in gravy, which she also turns her nose up at? That led into a whole can of worms (which I don’t think they sell in the pet shop, but I’m sure she wouldn’t eat anyway.)

Enough, or I’ll miss my word limit. I’m trying to show that decisions (however apparently trivial) scare me because of the possibility of getting them wrong. It’s not just other people who do that to me, I can do it to myself.

Hold that thought.

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The Hermit (Part 2)

Weekly therapy session on Skype yesterday. The evening before, I was feeling quite down, but by the time lunchtime rolled around I was wondering what we were going to talk about.

She remarked that for the second week running I seemed to be quite happy and content with life. This week I did my shopping in Sainsbury’s, and used the self checkout, so I didn’t even have to interact with the checkout person, as I did last week in the Co-op. Not having to be with people suits me. I think about good friends I’ve known, how much I’ve enjoyed spending time with them, some who’ve helped, bullied or cajoled me onto new paths through my life, and the joy of my children and grandchildren, I’m aware of all those things, but still I think: enough, now it’s enough just to be on my own, doing what I want, when I want, how I want. ‘Snow can hurt your eyes, but only people make you cry.’ I’m even managing to be kinder to myself, less judgemental over the chaos, quietening the critical voices. I think about the times when I was travelling, how I revelled in just being, in anonymity and invisibility, looking out of the window of a train, or sipping coffee on a café terrace, just to be somewhere without feeling I needed to justify myself to anyone. That’s how it is now: sitting in my garden in the sunshine, or in my bay window listening to the radio and crocheting, or at my PC in the mornings pouring out my words from the wellspring of my soul. This is who I am.

I talked to her about my thoughts on the stages of grief, somewhat apprehensive that I’d taken it the wrong way, or that she’d say it was outdated or I was oversimplifying (a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). But she was genuinely interested in what I was saying, she explained some of the background, where the original ideas had come from and, yes, it has been distorted and misused but it still has application, and no, it’s not just ‘pop psych’. She said I’d latched on to the crucial point that it can be hard to distinguish between ‘denial’ and ‘acceptance’, that it can be cyclical and it’s not always a straight progression to a nirvana of acceptance.

I think perhaps this time of being home alone, of not pushing myself out into the world to interact with others, has been exactly what I need. So much of my emotional life has been taken up with that sense of incompleteness and failure as a person, the hopeless quest for a soulmate to fill the void in myself. Enough.

But the time will come when I’ll have to go out there again, and I will have to be with people, and things will happen that will bring me down. I don’t know how to prepare for that. But at least now I recognise the danger.