Day 673: Bruce Lee Yoga

It's been a lovely, many-faceted, simple, easy, pensive, rich day, full of birds and butterflies. Even a dull as shit day where nothing happens is full of birds and butterflies here, though if I spend too long swearing at a screen because the internet doesn't work, I notice fewer of them. There are bugs too, of course; a great big fat black and yellow thing upside down in the big plug-hole, plump enough to fill it. I tried to lift it with a scourer. I finally flipped it with a piece of grapefruit skin – the right way up it's just a massive cockroach, however pretty its belly is - only to find the fucker in exactly the same position two minutes later. I'm not going to spit my toothpaste on top of that! I scooped it out again and lobbed it into the bushes. It landed upside down. Some insects are losers.

Yoga was a laugh again, and a chance misunderstanding led to a conversation which in turn led to me preparing a Bruce Lee yoga class for tomorrow. There will be karate noises and chopping, mark my words. We will be channelling our inner Bruce Lee. If only I had reliable (or indeed, switched on) internet, I could do a bit more research, but as it stands, I'm going to have to make that shit up. There's not really a way to get that right, though, is there? If my karma is really mashed, a random Bruce Lee Uberfan will join the class tomorrow, and will tut and huff all the way through.

I spoke to both Ruths in the last 24 hours. Actually, I spoke to both Ruths yesterday, and then one of them again today, just for a flippety snip of a nanochat. Well, maybe a little bit longer than that, but it was short and meaty like a pie and well worth it, and I even had a tiny taste of David laughing about enemas in the background. I feel very loved when I speak to them. It helps when David shouts 'I love you... did you hear that?' and when Ruth says it lots of times per call. I love them too, so that helps. A bit of a great big love party, then, what with the deep pleasure of talking to my beloved Related Ruth too.

Good company on my trip to town today and the bonus of discovering a place where I can sit and drink coffee that tastes good - made by Dutch people in the 'making it into a drink' stage anyway – the coffee beans are local and delicious. Interesting conversations and ones that made me ruminate.


I am so very grateful to two people who have been with me for yoga and massage for four consecutive days (five tomorrow). It has been an honour, a pleasure and a massive way to go deeper in the work that's doing itself here. I feel like I'm being shown a whole shed-load of things.

I made a commitment to myself today, and I make it publicly here now: I will never again belittle this energy healing work by playing it down or trying to make it palatable and 'not too hippy'. In fact I'll stop using the h word. This is really profound stuff. It happens, when it happens, because the person is ready to do the work and open to surrendering to it. It happens because we are present and accepting and because we agree to do it. I don't have to know much or do much (hence feeling like an imposter), but it takes me to be there and to focus for it to happen. And it is life-changing, profound, wonderful work. It creates shifts. Things genuinely move on through and leave, sometimes things that have been hanging out in your energy field for years.

I don't mean Big Bad Scary Things That Will Eat Your Soul – I mean energy you don't need any more; stories that have woven their roots in and have no motivation to move; ideas that mess things up or looseness/tightness is places where the opposite would work better. You don't have to think of yourself as having been in some kind of psychic danger to feel better when stuff you don't need burns off or comes out and leaves your field. Combined with massage and hands on, deep bodywork, it's even more powerful. Well chosen words help too. Not chatting. Not me 'knowing' what's happening either, but listening and if it feels right, asking. As I can hear my wonderful coach Fiona's voice saying in my head this second 'Why would you throw away powerful tools you already have just because you're learning new ones?'.

It's all very well making learning something new easier by resisting the urge to compare it to/return to techniques that are already familiar, but once the learning stage is over and the work starts, bring it all back in. Use what works for the situation. If you have an awl and an awl is called for, don't shun the awl because there were no awls on your woodcarving course last week. Dig out the awl. Use the awl. Then if you want to carve the awl hole to make it prettier, do it. Don't try and make an awl hole with a wood chisel just because you learnt how to use one last week. It'll be shit.

So if suggestions come while I'm working and I have to tools to ask powerful questions that don't prescribe answers, and I think it's relevant, I take the risk of getting it wrong. I had a teacher recently who said not to do this. I decline. I will do it if I want to and if the person I'm working with is open to it. If they're not, I'll shut up and stick to pummelling glutes and digging my fingers into shoulder meat. I give myself permission to get it wrong (another one of yours, Fiona, thank you) on my own terms.

It's funny, isn't it, how solitude and sociability work. This was a topic on the table today. I love to be social, I love connection and I need quite a lot of time alone. When I don't get it, I turn into (or at least feel like) a monster. I'm not easy. I'm tight and ungenerous. When I know I can have space when I need it, I'm fine. Angel Bitch, my friend calls me. Harsh but fair. But all the bitch needs is a walk and a little bit of space. And when I'm too much alone, I turn into an emo waif with haunted eyes and sucky energy. I need connection so badly that I can hardly muster it and the pull from me makes all sane people keep their distance. Or so it feels.


Today, I enjoyed both and mourned both. I enjoyed being in company; I enjoyed being alone and on the edges of said company and I mourned it a little too. Grateful to have my autonomy and a little yearnsome to be part of the lovely laughter I could hear and the obvious connection. Part of me thinks that instead of being here in the mountains enjoying my massage and yoga, I should be 'Out There', making myself available to become part of a couple who can laugh with each other so well.

I see a lot of couples come through here and I marvel at their laughter and their ease when I remember my own tightness. I question my ability to be anything other than alone. I speak to friends who love each other deeply and I fear that maybe it's much too late for me – I'm past the point. It's not a question of attractive or not, more of how long I've spent alone (pretty much all my life so far, if we're talking extended periods, and happily coupled, very little indeed).

And then that jolts me into remembering how much I dislike being in 'the wrong' couple. I hate it. I feel trapped and enclosed. I panic like a fox in a trap. I would bite off my own leg to get out, and sometimes, I might as well have done for the pain I've caused myself, and undoubtedly the other person. But there is someone, maybe, with whom I feel like a fox in a field (with another fox, obviously, or the simile falls flat on its foxy face).

So here we are. I love the taste of melancholy of hearing others get on well. It's a thing of joy and my twinges are to do with wanting it, not with not wanting it for others. I also love the taste of freedom to choose what I want to do. It's a dance, as every aspect of life is. It's a question of approaching it all with at least some degree of equanimity. Something like that, anyway. And not believing too many of our stories or our lies.

And tomorrow, we do Bruce Lee yoga. Pensive or not, life is good.

Day 672: Stupid Hat

I found a stupid hat on the floor in town the other day. I washed it. I dried it (much harder work, in this climate) and now I’m wearing it. It remains stupid. It’s more of a head bag than a piece of haute couture, but it pleases me. I haven’t worn it out yet; just in my room. I look at myself and think ‘no, that’s stupid.’ And then I keep it on.

I also have a hat that isn’t stupid, also found on the floor (halfway up a mountainette on Isla del Sol). I don’t like it. I don’t even wear it in the ‘house’ (I live in a little room with a bed and a desk and a shelving unit. It’s not really a house. I love it). I put it on and I think ‘no, that’s a tourist hat without anything to recommend it’ and I take it off again. I haven’t given it away yet, though. I imagine myself toiling in a field under the beating, burning sun, grateful for the arse of a tourist hat, or without one, going to buy another to replace it and finding I have to pay an arse of a tourist price for an arse of a tourist hat that I’m going to get no joy out of, so I might as well keep this one.

The stupid hat would be no help in the sun. It’s thick woven cotton and it’s shaped like a clumsy bag. There’s no brim. It would just make your head hotter. In the cold, though, it’d only just take the edge off. It’s slightly too big for my head, so it reduces my peripheral vision (which always leaves me a bit confused unless it’s done by a bike helmet, and then its practicality overrules the confusion, meaning the confusion is almost certainly made up/psychosomatic). It’s a stupid hat.

Hats aside, I was thinking today about the strange intimacy of the work I’m doing at the moment. I meet strangers. Within sixty seconds, they’re down to their knickers and lying face down, usually with their eyes closed, waiting for me to put my hands on them. They tell me the things I need to know (if I ask them) and then they give me their trust and let me move my hands over them. I am genuinely honoured at the level of trust.

And I am trustworthy, which is good. In fact, I make it a main focus to make sure people feel that very strongly, and feel safe and respected while they’re with me. I keep confidences and I use touch with the deepest love and with absolute disconnection from sexual energy. There’s nurture by the fuckload (ha - I enjoyed writing that) but no drive.

For years, I’ve said ‘if I did this all day every day, I’d be bored rigid’ but I think I was wrong. Perhaps if there was nothing else I could do, that would be true, and of course I always do SOMETHING other than massage (yoga at the moment, but other stuff too). But so far, I’m finding it fascinating. The differences and similarities; the fact that every body is different and unique and that however different they are, there are so many things that are true of most of them, even though there’s no such thing as a steadfast rule. Pliability, musculature, bone shapes, skin, sensitivity, shape, size and solidness of ribcage, balance/symmetry and imbalance, breathing, not breathing, ease with receiving, trying to help, surrendering, emotion, body (dis-)connectedness, openness, fears, energy, so, so, so much more. And I’m genuinely not judging - it makes no sense - just noticing. Personality too, that comes through our brief conversations and a whole load of other stuff. I am really loving this work.

And the yoga teaching too. Both seem like they ought to be repetitive, and they are in a way, but they’re so fascinating too. And what a gift when I get to do massage and yoga with the same people! I can design classes that work the bits that need working and complement the bodywork and energy work we’re doing. God, I’m grateful. So grateful, in fact, and so pleased with it, that I’m staying another week. I’ve paid my board until the end of next week, so anything I make this coming week is surplus - for food and whatever I need. And that, to my delight, feels like a bonus. No, I wouldn’t feel as good about doing so many massages if I wasn’t getting paid, but I would do some and currently, the money feels secondary. It’s a motivator, but one that I often forget about. And look at me, with all my qualifications, academic degrees, studies in this and that. I’m working with my hands and my voice and my energy and I’m absolutely loving it. In this moment.

Thanks - I had a go one one Ruth, and wrote to the other. I had a big old faceful of beautiful Kath, a smattering of Rob, a taste of Eddie and nublets of Dan, Aude, Paddy, Steen and lots of others. God, I’ve got it good, me. 

Day 671: Happy

It’s been a week and I’ve been meaning to tell you about so many things: the Bo Selecta bird, which I have never seen, but every day I hear it making a call just like the Bo-Selecta-Michael-Jackson weoo-hooee noise. It makes me smile every time. I like to think of it in a rubber mask.

There are flashy yellow-tailed weaver birds who make some noise or other (I never see them do it) and weave cocoon-like, waspy nests that hang from tall trees. There are the little fat pheasanty things that hang out in crowds and make a raucous, rattly shouting sound.  There was a little red-headed screecher up a tree today and then there are the condors who really do soar, in twos or threes, circling the huge dip of the valley against a backdrop of clouds and tall, green jungle-coated mountains, with occasional white-capped grandfather mountains appearing behind.

There’s a cat that runs sideways - it starts forwards and then its back legs go all aflail out to the side as it keeps running away. I’m sure it’s a terrible affliction and I should be sorry for it but it REALLY makes me laugh. And it’s relentlessly scared of me, so it does it every time I see it. Result!

There’s a pretty, loafy girldog who follows foreigners up here from town. She followed me one day, and then a French couple who were camping. The night after, she scared the life out of me by appearing out of the dark when I went to the toilet. She was approaching all sumbissive, but she’s big and any creature that size coming towards you in the dark when you don’t know what it is gives you a fright.

There are storms where it rains so hard it’s like being underneath a train as it goes over, washing away the electricity for the whole town and days (less than 5 hours later) that are hot like a Magaluf heatwave and give you crispy pork scratching skin if you don’t take precautions.

There are days where not much happens and others where I do a yoga class and five massages (yesterday). That also involved one massage somewhere else. To fit it in, I ran there and ran back, and got to my next one about a minute and a half late. I was impressed and I really enjoyed the exercise.

And because I teach a yoga class every day, I now have a daily practice - sometimes before the class and sometimes just in the class, but my body loves it, and the massage is physical too... more of a tai chi pushing hands kind of exercise than a yogaly thing. My body feels stronger, though, and my arms are starting to have tone from all the talking  to a roomful of people in downward dog.

There’s a fantastic Swiss woman who comes to yoga pretty much every day, and has massages too. She is so willing to laugh, creative and playful and up for anything, including roaring, doing Ghengis Khan yoga moves and doing ugly first date chewing to warm up the jaw (vital for a good yoga class). She delights me.

And to top it off, despite a reliably shoddy internet service up here, I have manage to speak to two of my favourite people over the last 24 hours, though I missed out on a go on both Ruths, which I intend to rectify in the next 24.

So here I am, and I’m content. Do I want to stay here for the rest of my days? Very unlikely. Am I changing the world? Not exactly, unless you count stretching a few backs, releasing a few sets of shoulders, and changing my own world by doing yoga every day, doing work that is filled with ease and nurture and laughing enough to make things worthwhile. But I’m surrounded by beauty and I get to choose what I do and where I am and I am so deeply grateful for that.

And I’d love to be able to show you how beautiful it is here, but the internet (see above) says no to most uploads, so maybe you don’t need to see the mountains, the animals, the clouds or the testicle tree (that’s the one that breaks my heart!). Just know that I am here and I am happy, and that I am bathing in thankfulness for that simple fact, never to be taken for granted.

Love

Day 670: Testicle Trees and Free Cake

It rained last night. And the night before. All night, pretty much, and when I woke up, the whole place was within the clouds. I’m up in the jungle mountains of Bolivia right now. Semi-tropical (which means lots of beautiful flowers in ridiculous colours  and even some testicle trees, which I will show you if I can ever download the images, though seriously, complaining about internet speeds when you’re both up a mountain and in a jungle is not on). Done, but not on.

It’s nice within the clouds. It’s like still being in a dream and the smells that come from the flowers are suspended in the air right there, ready to entice you with their sweetness. There are big fat drops that magnify petals and bugs alike. There is ‘not much visibility’, which means you can see the clouds and the close things, but not the mountains, or even the next bit of this mountain.

This afternoon, on the other hand, everything was clear. There were clouds. There are always clouds. But they were right the way over on the other side of the valley and they were dividing and dissipating, giving glimpses of serious, white-capped ranges hidden behind the green mountains in front. The garden I was sitting in, which belonged to the most delightful Swiss artist-homeopath-art therapist massage client, was full of lemon trees and brightly coloured flowers, which Dionysis, the man who let me in, was just giving me a tour of when she arrived. I love that his name reflects the orgy of natural voluptuousness that makes the garden stickier than a siren. I’d have happily hidden in the bushes and stayed there all night, watching birds fly as the dusk set in, listening for creatures I can only sit and imagine shouting, singing, choiring in the dark.

I’m holed up in this semi-tropical semi-paradise in an ecolodge called Sol y Luna, doubly recommended to me by Julian and wonderfully-named Wolf, fron Germany, so his name sounds like the kind of bark a tired and curmudgeonly old dog might make, if it could be bothered. I have a room that’s straight out of what I dreamed of (apart from the shelf at the bottom of the writing table, but as details go, that’s a small one). A bed beset by bookshelves at either end. I only have four books (two of them the same, but in different languages), but I appreciate the thought that I might have brought 500. There’s room for them.

It has a complex shelf/hanger/shoe rack unit made of wood and a gap to hide a bag. The bed is high and comfortable. It’s single (I prefer a double every time) but I’m unlikely to have company up here. There’s a poetry in its simple singleness too. I even like the bedclothes.  It has a little bedside unit in which I hide vegetables and occasional biscuits (or the other way round). It has a bedside lamp, a mirror and a window onto lushness, clouds and birdsong (see above).

The town itself’s a little dull. It’s a long way from anything. There are a few tourists and a lot of people from here. There’s an honesty about this place (Bolivia so far, I mean by that) which means that sometimes, when I speak to someone, they glare at me as if they hate me (because they do, but it’s not personal). They’re not just a bit indifferent, they’re actively, aggressively, defiantly rude. I’be felt the ‘you’re a gringo’ thing a lot in Peru, and here, it’s up a level. It’s the first time I’ve ‘got’ what it’s like to be black in a white dominated world. I’m not saying I get it completely - how could I - I’m still part of a privileged race and very much conscious of it - but the contempt of racism that doesn’t give a shit who you are, just what you are, that doesn’t give you a chance to be anything but what they see and what they judge, whatever you do. And all I can say is fuck, I’m sorry. Just this level of it sucks, so what you go through in the States if you’re black, especially if you’re black and poor, is shit in a bag and it never goes away and I’m sorry you have to swallow that all the time.

And then there are other people who are gently, softly open, whatever, whoever. They just accept, speak, look, ask, ignore, nurture. All those things combined and separate. Take Trudi. The first time I spoke to her, I wasn’t sure. She seemed wary. She runs a shop which is the open door of her home, wider, with stuff to buy. She and her husband sit in the back with the telly and come out when you call. I bought something there on the trek back up the hill a few days ago. We talked and now each time I go, she offers me not only warmth and conversation, but some little freebie, a cake baked by her daughter, warm biscuits wrapped in kitchen roll, some bread. I took her flowers today, great ostentatious pink ones, just to say thank you for such kindness.

I have SUCH beautiful photos for you. I’m aching to share them, but they just won’t post. It’s too much for the tiny modem to handle. Let’s hope this goes and if not, I’m thinking of you. Thanks for reading. Thanks for taking a little bit of Bolivia with you in your mind, even if it’s British Claybourne flavoured in its filter. I’m delighted to be able to share it with you.  Love love love.
x

Day 679: Not Much Peace

But lots of light.

As I said in my last post, I'm in La Paz. It's not where I'd have chosen (though in fact it was my suggestion). I've lived in London for 12 years and I'm here in South America. Big cities aren't by any means what I'm craving. Peru, and now Bolivia, don't go light on the car horns or exhaust fumes. There's noise. There's rammed and ramshackle busyness. There are crowds.

But here I am and here I was this afternoon, a little unwillingly in my heart. It's been a time of compromise. I'm travelling with a beloved friend and we're finding that our tastes, our styles, our desires are very, very different. So coming to this city was a compromise. I'm on my way to the mountains really, via here. We were walking and exploring, and while it was good, there was a tight, tense nag in me. I was inside out and everything was a little bit 'not how I'd do it'... even though I had no idea what it was, in fact, that I would do. I laughed at myself many times along the way, but ultimately, the fumes and dirty streets were getting to me, so I took my leave to head back to the hostel.

As soon as I did that, my step was lighter, my eyes more open, the beauty in my path more visible. The flowers in the central bit between two massive roads were beautifully put together, colours contrasting, different heights, shapes, patterns. Such love in their design, I saw. Just love. 

All I needed to expand was to be alone...but of course, that never lasts for long when things are flowing. I stopped and bought a coke (yes, I drink coke, yes, I know it's paint stripper and big business nastiness; I hate myself a little every time, if that helps*) from a street seller woman in traditional dress and a hat (they all wear hats). I went to leave and she did a grump-faced nod at the glass bottle. I had to give it back. I stood to drink.

Not a minute passed and she asked where I was from. We got to talking. When I said I did massage as a job, her shoulders hunched, her hand reached for her midriff and she asked me more and more. She took my hand, showed me where it hurt. I stood behind her and gave her a little taster. We talked style, location price (no price for her, not this time anyway – if we do this, we do it for the sake of it). She said no to a bit more of a trial through clothes. She wants the full works – clothes off, oil, deep tissue massage. Let's find a way.

I sat, on her command, on a minuscule stool and we talked longer as she sold and changed and bagged without a flinch. As always here, the questions: children? Husband? Why not? Age? On my own? Really? Family? She went deeper. Why here? Why now? When had I last spoken to my mother? Why would I be away from my family? She was very concerned about my travel plans and tried to make me promise to take my friend wth me to the mountains for protection. What she did do, before I left, was show me exactly how to find her again and make me promise to come back and do so as soon as I set foot in La Paz again. And gave me a gift – a little bag of tortilla chips. And lots of nurture. I hadn't felt I needed it, but I was very grateful for it – just easy, gentle, maternal, freely given love for a gringo stranger who bought a bottle of coke (and gave the bottle back).

I gave her a hug and a kiss as I left. Ascencia. Thank you, Ascencia. You certainly lifted up my day. I smiled the whole of the rest of my afternoon, wandering the streets on a tomato hunt (another story), clutching my little bag of gifted crisps and grinning. A blissful gift, the whole experience. I'm lit. 

* on the Coke/sugar front, I would like some help! I've got me quite a little refined sugar habit going on and I'd like to quit it. It doesn't help me. I feel clear in so many other ways, but I lean on sugar like a drunk old friend. Anyone like to scare/encourage me onto a new path?

Day 678: (Not) Coming Home

I'm in La Paz. It was by no means my intention, certainly at the start (though at the start of what, I couldn't tell you).

Two weeks or so ago, I was supposed to fly 'home', back to England, because that's what you do, isn't it, when you were born there, when you've been living and working there for years and years and years (since last time you upped and went travelling, anyway) and when it's full of people that you love and miss. Only I didn't.

About two months before the date of the flight, I remember saying to John (who now, weirdly, is on his own way back to the country he comes from) that I was feeling uncomfortable, because I suspected I wasn't going back – not soon, at least. He laughed and said 'Oh yeah, I remember that. It'll pass.' He was right. I don't feel uncomfortable any more.

When I was still in the phase of deciding, I was prodded with weepy dreams of having 'done the right thing' and gone home, despite the nag that said that now was not the time. They were full of fraughtness and a feeling of 'oh no, what did I do?' and of being lost and out of place in the writhing mass of London.

I did try to change my flight, but the price was prohibitive. As I waited for them to call me back to confirm that this really was the case, my belly was a-bubble and my heart was all excited. When they came back with a reasonable fee for the change, it sank and died. He gave me a few minutes to decide and call him back, but the decision was made – I let it go. When he called back to say they couldn't do my dates, it was easy to say 'just let it go, then'. Either way, there was no way I was getting on it, and what's the point of paying hundreds of pounds for a date you know you're not going to make anyway.

So to all those beloved people I will miss for longer (most of whom don't read this blog, some of whom do), I love you more than ever before, in fact, because I had to think about you so hard deciding that this journey right now had to carry on even if it meant not seeing you. I am grateful beyond measure for how many fantastic people I have in my life, many of them spattered (spat?) around the world already. I'm grateful for the richness and the sweetness of the people who cross my path here, from heartfelt deep friendships to casual kitchen chats with open-faced sweethearts.  Thank you, that force that is providing this. Thank you all for being who you are. I'm terribly pleased with you, whether we get to be close right now or not.

And thank you, sweet soul sister, for being both the rock and the water that helps me flow and hold.

Europe, see you sometime. South America, let's do this. 

(internet too slow for pictures, which is a shame  -  I have some crackers I'd love to share)