Ha ha ha - the foot pie post.This morning, I spotted a motorbike in a hairdresser's shop. A big, beefy white one. And then I noticed a big, beefy bloke giving another bloke a head-shave. It was 06:58, by my watch.
The two Turkish men in the Station Cafe did their comedy duo routine for me while I bought some coffee ('I am only small, he bullies me all the time' etc.). They always make me smile. I got my train with ample time. Ample as a word is enough to make me smile.
It was raining quite hard when I got in the water. It's beautiful, and all the women in the pond this morning were beaming. It's a strange sensation. A tiny bit annoying in your face, but very pretty at the same time. Mary (the only other swimmer I see in the early morning slot most days who's about the same age as me) says that when it snows, it feels like little cold needles on your bare shoulders. And that you're pink like a kabanossi sausage when you come out of the water when it's really cold.
The ducks were funny. They were hanging out in massive groups, like teenagers at bus stops. Actually, I think they might be teenagers. There are only a few females and lots of males, and fundamentally, they're 'only after one thing'. Still, every time I turned my head there was another sudden gathering of them. Like a much less sinister 'The Birds'.
I didn't get much sleep last night. I was worried about a few things that really don't need worrying about... not because they don't matter, but because it just doesn't help, or make them go away, even a little bit. It makes them bigger, in fact, and bigger and bigger. And they're not even there yet, those things. They're just fears and ideas. They don't exist and perhaps they never even will.
I spoke to wise and wonderful Esther Lilley up in York and she poured some sense into my ears and made me laugh. She has a knack of saying the right thing, not just to me but to pretty much everyone she pays attention to. She does very well at honouring what I'm feeling and then leaving a door open to move on. It's a gift that she has and I'm pleased to be her friend.
I got to thinking about gratitude again, though, and its role in feeling good. It's not that I'm covering up the bits of my day to day existence that feel bad, or denying them. I am noticing them too. Perhaps I don't mention them as much here. I do go on about them in some contexts. But I do notice them. Sometimes with big reactions, but more and more with slightly smaller ones.
I'm noticing the feelings of indignation or anger or irritation and I'm naming them. Quite often, I laugh at them. Oh, there goes disproportionate irritation, for example (at a lady who ate her stinky KFC on the bus, giving every morsel a smakky round of applause with her lips and saliva, sucking her teeth and the mashed up food). To do that means I'm not wrapped up inside it with no way out. I'm at least its equal. We can get by like that.
Or feelings of sadness or anger or frustration. They're still there and I notice them, and sometimes I stay with them a bit too long, but the gratitude and the bits of glee can co-exist. So I can be pulled out of my morbid thoughts by a bird call or a playful dog. I can take a moment to break off where I was at and let something else in. I'm still grateful.
I don't know many people who have to focus on a 'negativity practice' to have to remember to pick up on the bad stuff, especially with newspapers and our own fears fuelling our drive to think about the less glowing side of life. The habit of gratitude needs to be nurtured, for many of us (thanks, Ed Bennett, you interesting egg, you).
When I was little, I used to think that salt and pepper were like plus and minus - that they would cancel each other out - so if I'd poured too much salt on my cauliflower, to take away the taste, I'd add more pepper and if it still tasted bad, more salt again. I had some retch-worthy meals learning that lesson.
In a more positive way, I think awareness of gratitude and glumness, for example, relate to each other more like salt and pepper than plus and minus. They don't cancel each other out, they co-exist. They don't have to bleed into each other. Maybe I feel sad or tired, but the sky is still beautiful and the water is still cold and calming.
I'm grateful to Ellen Allen in Yorkshire. She's done her best, and that's all she can do. What she's been able to do might not acheive what I want it to, but I'm grateful just the same. And she has a pleasing name. Thank you also to Kate, for such good conversation, Rob for creative flowings forth and all the strangers who have smiled at me today. There were lots. And a text from Jessica Loudon. Oh yes. Pleasing times.
Our lunchtime show was an epic fail. No advertising, so although we had prepared two separate shows and travelled a way to do the shows, only two children, both much younger than the target age group, were there with their mother. We couldn't do any kind of a show, but we did let them put one on for us, and they were very funny indeed.
The older girl (nearly 5) was very annoyed that her younger sister, visibly infatuated, wanted to be only where she was. Whatever Hannah said, Kate would repeat (as best she could), doing actions and stealing the show a bit. We had a full on rendition of Old Macdonald, though, and a bow, and a string of stories about a poodle and some fish and some tigers in the forest. Kids don't seem to need showing how to do stories. They just do them. So, our failed show still failed, but I still had a lovely time. Can't complain.
No comments:
Post a Comment