I love my bike. It's home, all better. Thanks, Kate, for picking it up. I've missed it.
I caught my train… that in itself was a blessing. I was still in my underwear at the time I’d normally leave the house, bumbling about all content without thinking about leaving. I wheeled down to the station. It was drizzley-misty and so was my head, so I locked the bike at the there. I love the walk across the heath, so it’s hardly a chore.
It drizzled like being in a cloud, not like actual rain. Except under the trees, where the fine rain gathers into drops and falls onto the leaves. They fall slower than rain that fat, but quite loud. Lazy rain.
When there’s cloud, the different layers of the heath are picked out in shades of grey and green. They look like a collage in tissue paper – kind of grainy, but quite soft round the edges.
Two pleasing bits of dog action. Most dogs aren't that interested in saying hello. These two were. One on the way to the pond, one on the way back. Just a quick hello, but very pleasing.
No gloves in the pond today, but my hands still kind of worked. It was interesting. It was a question of attention. With gloves, I noticed the prickling shoulders. Without them, that didn’t even slide into my consciousness – my attention was on my hands and the sensation in them. I was going to say ‘hurty’ but that’s not quite fair. They were just where my attention was.
Isn’t irritation a funny business. I’ve had quite a lot of it going on. For me, it seems to be about my interpretation of another person’s intention. To be more specific, there’s a person at The Hub, where I work quite often, who I find very irritating indeed. And if I sit and analyse, which I have today, it doesn’t seem to be to do with what he does so much as my judgement that he doesn’t give a shit how what he does affects anyone else.
So he’s eating his food, smakk smakk smakk, scrape, scrape. Nothing wrong with that. So I breathe… Ah yes. It’s not his eating in itself that’s annoying me, it’s that he’s chosen to sit near me and I know (or think I know) that if he decides to watch something online, he’ll turn it up loud and will refuse to turn it down for anyone. That pisses me off because of the message ‘my needs are much more important than anyone else’s’, and this occupies my mind.
I focus on that and interpret his noisy eating and on - oh god, how rude – his Opening of a Can of Pop in My Vicinity. It’s not bad behaviour, that, is it? No. But I’ve got it in my head that this man has no respect, so my irritation is justified. But it’s not him, is it? It’s my mind. Oh, you Zen masters, you are wise. Next step: rise above it. Or distract myself. Or leave. I stood at the heater by the sink. What did he do? Came to wash up next to me, all clattery. Oh, Zen masters, again.
What made me laugh is that to take away the stimulus of his presence nearby, I put in my headphones. The gravelly Russians (Leningrad) came on, so my version of peace is a bunch of loud, aggressive, incomprehensible shouters.
I had an inspiring meeting with Rob Grundel. Honestly, how did this happen? We meet to talk about something and ideas flow like grain out of a massive hopper, or … ooh.. do your remember that advert a few years ago with all the coloured beans bouncing down the hill to some jazzy music – like that. Not very stoppable. Or like building lego. Each brick depends on the one before to be able to be built. Boom, boom, build, build, and all of a sudden you’ve got a helicopter that has little doors that open and actual people inside, with hair and stuff.
The only problem right now is that there's not even enough time to talk about all of this, let alone to do it all. But the bits that need to get done now will get done now. I'm still excited about the prospect of an international impro festival that really mixes it up - as in more than just Johnstone and/or Chicago, but what are they doing in Poland and why, what about the Columbians, how is clown influencing impro in Peru (etc). India? Fuck knows. Everywhere. Whether or not that'll make it this time, I dunno.
And this evening, we got to rehearse (and therefore play) in preparation for the Operation Insulation fundraiser show on Nov 24th. I'm really excited about it and I've really missed playing. I love to play, almost as much as I love my bike.
If I’d known being grown up would be this much fun, I’d have done it sooner.
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