Day 694: Kindness

I had the loveliest parking attendant ever the other day. He had a very nice face and he was all ready to help me before I quite knew I was going over to talk to him. He explained where I could and couldnt' park (it really wasn't clear) and then told me, with some rule-breaking glee, that every single parking attendant here would be on holiday between 3pm yesterday and New Year's Eve, so that meant I could park where I like. "Park on double yellows if you're that way inclined," he said. "Nobody's going to do a thing about it."

Ha. I haven't! I did park in a bay without paying. The double yellows here are for good reason.. my car will get mashed by other cars if I park on them. I got my first fine the other day. It was frustrating, but once I realised that I had totally misunderstood the sign, and there was no arguing it, I paid and decided to enjoy it as 'my first ever parking ticket'. I'm not going to keep it or anything. It's already in the bin. But any way to minimise the arse.

These are times of high emotion and of grief. I am alright. The people whose situation it is are 'alright' too, in as far as they can be. It's challenging and very, very sad, but it's also full of love. People step up. Love comes out where normally it might be masked or ignored. If I could go back and change this situation by wanting it with all my might, we wouldn't be here, but since we are, we are finding little blessings and big ones, we are feeding the love, we are celebrating our first parking ticket and giving thanks for all the parking attendants who do their best to make it better for us by letting us in on their secrets. And there are so, so many of them waiting to show the kindness they have, just waiting to be called upon. 

Day 693: Your Love is an Apricot

Thank you, you forces beyond my perception, for giving me the energy, clarity and Schwung to do the Talking Like TED course on Tuesday. It went off like a dream. I was concerned, having been so ill, that I might not be able to pull it out of the bag to my own satisfaction... on Sunday, it felt like there wasn't even a bag to pull it out of. I think that was part of the mental journey of underminey fearness too. I know I know this stuff and I know I love it. 

I'm grateful, though, for all the help. I was ok on Monday, and on Tuesday, I'd almost never have known I'd been ill. I even ate normal food with no repercussions. Today is slightly more delicate, but yesterday was mint. My intentions for the course were fully met. Not all the goals were, but they were too big for the time allowed. 

If it were, it would be juicy and rich, like this one

I had a delicious nugget of professional juice yesterday. While talking about the power of metaphor, the delegates named one of the many many many talks they'd heard the day before as memorable because of a particular metaphor the speaker had used to make her point. I delved... it was a fabulous woman who'd been on the Storytelling for Leaders course I'd run at the same organisation in October, one of the first players of the suddenly made-up game, 'Your Love is an Apricot', as a vehicle to play with metaphor. She nailed it! I felt proud like a mother, and all bristly (in a good way). It's nice to make a difference, even just in that.

It's a microcosm of the world and it may not be the most lifesaving work in the world, but it is good and I love it. I get into this state of joyous, juicy flow and I enjoy every second of it. It's like the tenderest meat, the sweetest leaves, the richest of sauces. It's a feast of presence and occupation. I'm very, very lucky and very, very glad. 

In my need to do something of worth, I've been looking at the Help Refugees website. 

Did you know that you can up and buy blankets, clothes and cooking equipment direct from them here, and that you can buy gift cards for people this Christmas that do the same. We've got enough stuff, haven't we? Black Friday, my arse. Must-have gifts from amazon, my tits. This is a proper Christmas present. 

Day 692: Mixed Cursings

Times of mental suffering are times of long-term blessing, in the end. That’s not to say that they’re a thing to be aspired to, or to spend too much of life on, only that their discomfort is not in itself a sign of wrongness.

I know I’m rephrasing what the Buddhists say and countless spiritual teachers. My aim is not to be original, but to get this out somehow and to express something, make sense of it with words. And I’m also aware that I won’t be winning any trophies for accepting where I’m at right now. I have not scored my personal best at that these last few weeks.

If time were other shapes

I am not myself and not my best right now. What I’m finding hard to stomach, in a very physical way, is that this is still me. This is what you get. 

I am not photoshop perfect, not even close. I’m not always nice or wise or reasoned. I’m not always a person I want to be around, but here it is, this doughy mix of undercookedness that I am in this moment. It’s what makes the tasty cake. 

And if we let linear time burn off like steam, it could be said that this is a necessary part of being, with time wrapped around it, or weaving in and out.

Go and see Arrival for a beautiful examination of linear time (and language, communication, love). That’s an aside, but take it to heart, treat yourself, go.

I am blessed-afflicted with a physical illness, a virus that has wiped the floor with me and keeps dunking me back, a dirty rag on the end of a stick, into the grey, filthy bucket for another rinse. I’m not able to eat properly – and that in itself is an education. 

I’m robbed of unhealthy comfort – I physically can’t swallow this emotion back down with food, because my body will reject it if I do. I must just feel it in all its acidity and give thanks for the awareness this is giving me. How often do I swallow down what’s going on inside me with a coffee, a cake, a something to draw the presence away from unpleasantness. Thank you… it took this.

Maybe I’ve taken sugar and spice to heart too deeply. It is not all I am. My mind, that sneaky labyrinth-weaver, tells me that nobody in all of time would ever have called me nice, but I know from out-of-body distance that this cannot be true, it’s just my thoughts, sirens of distraction, leading me off to crash upon the rocks instead of follow the course I set.

It is all part of this great symphony. Without discordance, harmonies can slip into saccharine, bland soundtracks. Wake me up with contrast, so I taste the notes that intertwine at pleasing intervals in all their sweetness, every one a gift.

Thank you Lilley, Ben, David, Rob. Thank you, Ruth, for your patience, care and generosity. It can’t be easy having this half-cooked creature in your home right now, and I am very, very grateful that you do.

Day 691: Surrounded

For a long time, I’ve been trying to build a better relationship with my ‘crew’. There are a number of other ways to put this. I want to be in constant, respectful, clear relationship with those voices of higher wisdom that are around and inside me.

How you see this phenomenon depends largely on how you paint your world. I have no fixed beliefs about this, but I do have a number of concepts that I like and often return to. There’s the inner mentor – the older you who knows what steps you can take now to become that same future self that’s giving you advice. Thanks to Coaches Training Institute and Tara Mohr for that way of seeing things. CTI also has a whole raft of others – your captain, who is the leader in you, the observer, and the child, among others.

I also love the idea that the ether that I cannot perceive (though I have friends who can) is peopled with beings, spirits, souls, whose sole purpose in this fraction of existence is to be my guides, lovers, and champions. They do their work through me, or guide my hands and mind to do mine. They show me what that work is. They give me that glowing, flowing buzz that lets me know that ‘this is it’ when I do. I don’t care about the truth of such a concept, only about its comfort and its joy.

Another name is ‘higher self’ or ‘inner knowing’ and of course yet one more is God, a term that defies fixed definition, even just within myself, let alone when we each try to compare our diverse concepts of it/us/him/her/them…

Because I hear it, this guidance, in words quite often, with the part of me that hears without my ears. There’s a marked difference between these words and those of my internal dialogue, which is often (though not always) pissy and unhelpful.

There’s a different tone to the answers than the voice that asks the questions, which is so fallibly, humanly mine. The answers come from a simpler place, like when you tune a radio and finally, the satisfying crispness of a voice without white noise to muffle it tells you that you’ve finally tuned in.

Today, I realised that I have this access, I have this channel, these voices have been speaking all along, waiting for me to hear. And I do hear. The difference is in the action that I take (or don’t take).

This morning, I had a clear, helpful download of information about a course I’m leading soon – how to structure it to do the almost impossible task of concentrating two and a half days’ worth of course into five hours. I even heard what to say and when to say it. That didn’t feel like thinking, just receiving, like that privileged place of awe that happens when a poem comes, already mostly formed, or when an idea drops in from… somewhere… or a song.

And maybe, here’s another take, more scientific and less magical, that it’s just a creative process, where rumination lives up to its roots. I have an idea in my mind our mouth and then I swallow it for processing. It makes its way round all my thinking stomachs, occasionally coming back to consciousness for a further chew, before (and this is where the metaphor falls down a little) being processed into a steaming turd full of everything that’s needed for the execution of said idea. If only cows spat up PhD theses, just to prove my point.

Whatever. The beginning of the metaphor hit the spot, for my process, at least. And the result is a clean download of formed words, ideas, instructions, that comes from all that masticating below the line of conscious processing.

Thank you. I’m very grateful for the tip-off, wherever it came from. Thank you, guides and crew and mind and body. Thank you for letting me in on this. You rock.

Day 690: Autumn

There is no more beautiful time to be driving around the country than this. On my trip from Somerset to London yesterday, I made not one but repeated, involuntary moans of beauty appreciation pleasure as I drove along. The words are overused because they're true. Honey yellows and burnished, bronzy golds. Heartfelt browns and sudden, surprising reds. One tree, just minding its own business, busy being golden yellow with a splash of red like a beating heart expanding from its chest. 

Colours sitting alongside each other like some kind of beauty prank. I almost feel their glee. It's the proms. It's carnival time. I bow my head and dance.

Welcoming Brunhilde Concepción Cheese

And my car. This is the first time I can speak those words. I have a car. Brunhilde Concepción, a little haven on wheels. She's a shiny silver Toyota Yaris, compact, with thighs of steel and patience like you couldn't believe. When I crunch her gears or stall her, she just breathes through it and takes me safely onwards. I like her very much. 

We've been a long way already, for my first full week or so of driving. From London to Totnes, then Dartmoor, Bristol, Bath, Stroud, Frome, Glastonbury, Wells and back to London, with a few backs and forths and labyrinthine weavings in the mix. That's big stuff, for me, having passed my test in 1992 and hardly driven since. I've reversed backwards, badly, up a hill with no more than a body's width on either side. I had to get the gentleman in the other car to help - I kept pooching into the hedgerow wall and stalling. That was only day two, though, so I forgive myself. Parking has got easier, and stalling rarer. We know each other better, Brunhilde and I, and we're finding our stride. I am very grateful.

And liberated. I had no idea how freeing it is to have a car. I've never owned one, so any driving (which I've always kind of loved) has been with permission, and limited in scope. Now I have my car. I can get in it and go somewhere, change my mind without changing a ticket, take turnings for the sake of it and visit people just like that. I'm stunned. A whole world has opened up. I think I'll drive to Hungary soon. Why not?

I am in the arms of humility at the moment, in a 'bow down now' way. I've been out of sorts within myself, unable to ground, unable to take the moment by moment appreciation of the wonders in my world. I am appreciating, but from a long arm's length of removal. And yet I see the incredible people in my life, their gentleness and giving, the fact that even though the loneliness sets in and stories tell me I am not loved, not held, not wanted, the forest floor of this rich autumn is scattered with gifts... homes that open themselves to me with the hearts of those who live there, generous acts of love from so many different sources and in so may forms.

I see that, as always, it's not a problem with what is, but with how it is perceived... the filter's been set to dark, but the light has kept on shining. Thank you, so many people, to many, here, to name. From friends to dogs and cats, to random strangers inviting me into their homes.

I have to tell you about Margot... a woman I did not know who found me, god knows how, and pursued me on the phone and through the web to ask me to come and live in her attic, just for a while. She had a strong feeling, she said, that this would be just right, so I must come and eat a chicken with her, see the room and sleep in it. This at a time when my every cell was trembling for want of a base, a safe space, a haven. 

I arrived with stress tugging at my neck and shoulders, my mind all tangled and my jaw tight like a deadblolt lock. I left suffused with love, well rested, dog-spoilt (a 5-month old chestnut collie with doleful eyes), familied to the nines and welcomed, nourished in every way. I may just take her up on her offer of short term stay while I find my actual home. I thank you, Margot, and your inexplicable insistence that this particular lost stranger belongs, for now at least, at the top of your house, looking out at the sky.

Day 689: To Dance

You can't beat an Argentinian! Fresh from adoring my time with beautiful Sandra Alonso in Madrid, I just got to have a go on Lorena Pollock in London. Okay, so with a name like that, she has a little British influence in the family, but she is proper Argentinian, that one, and an utter delight. 

Thank you too for a lovely, flowing job or two with excellent people. Always the way with actor jobs. They're funny creatures, and really good to work/play/be with. Thank you Ravin, Sean and Teresa for a most excellent jaunt and some really good work. I loved it, and to Molly and Anne Marie for another. It's a small world but one filled with eggs of the most entertaining nature. 

My cousin Ruth and I, in the last week or so, have mostly laughed, often about the stupidest of things, not funny things, and often in the gaps between less joyful news, but many times we have sat across from each other with tears in our eyes, sniggerweeping at each other's face. I cherish these moments of such ease and such delight. 

And finally, reluctantly, I go to dance. I know this reluctance will last only as long as I'm sitting in my head, and that when my body gets involved, all joy breaks loose. Thank goodness. This body needs it. It has been neglected. With love, muscles and hips at the ready... to dance!

Day 688: See You Soon, Bacon-Arms!

After toileting my phone and borrowing a brick, I’ve been cameraless for a couple of days. It’s like when you move a mirror. You don’t realise how often you use it until you find yourself staring at a portrait of your grandma to see if you look fit to leave the house. There have been so many things that merited a snap, and the universe wants me to write them.

Great Head House made me laugh. I’ll stay there next time. My airbnb hosts were the best, but they didn’t offer that! The glory of the bed of copper leaves that had laid itself out alongside me as I trundled to the station. Perfect, sheened beech leaves and hiding oak. I looked and looked, trying to drink it in so it would stay.

Yesterday, from the top of Hoad Hill, I looked out over mountains. I’ve yearned and yearned these past few months and though I wasn’t in them, I could smell them. The smell of Lakeland moss, the crisp of algae-covered stones, animal-scented fields, the fresh, sweet rich of country. I gazed out over dry-stone walls weaving through fields, sheep cloud formations, solitary trees. I fed myself on layer upon layer of distance, this mountain, that moor, this stretch of land.

It took me back. The Lakes were a childhood summer holiday regular, and a favourite. At fifteen, me and Corinne Hey (who I admire in her energy, openness and outdoors prowess, both then and now) took ourselves up to the Lakes to hike. We booked hostels, loaded up our bags and packed a map. We’d done a little bit of the Prince of Wales (??) scheme, so it wasn’t our first solo map trip, but not far off.  We did Scafell and nearly copped it at one point – a heavy backpack and a steep up. As memory is, I can’t remember which of us it was.

I stood and looked at Coniston, Scafell, and another whose name has gone … I ached to be there, walking, finding our way. I make a promise now, to take a friend or lover there within the year, to hike and have those mountains bless us as they did when I was young.

I love the north. I love how the hills give solace with their presence, no need for anything. They hold me better than the flat of Somerset, or the rolling downs of Sussex. I love the stone, the vegetation and the land. And any extra degrees of cold are more than compensated for in people warmth. I miss it and maybe I’ll come home and make the north my base.

And what a time to be here, with autumn throwing itself at the trees with lascivious abandon. Fire bushes jumping out at me, bushes full of bees despite the cold, gaudy red rosehips making raspberries look subtle, the treescape pulling focus from the flowers. Everywhere there is to look, my eyes are spoilt with symphonies of colour, greenbrownredgoldyellowbronzeandorange, blues and greys and creams painting the skies, punctuated with black crows: too much beauty to ever get enough of.

And every time I come home, I’m greeted by Skye, the crazy-wiry-wired Springer Spaniel. That really only means walking with her as she strains at the leash until she does her poo (mostly in the middle of the road) as she’s no house arrest for spay-scar healing. Her default positions are sitting, lying, flipping on her back, all including wide eyes and an intense stare. If I sit and work, she sits at my feet and cleans herself. It was hard to leave her, but her owners are back soon (my fantastic airbnb hosts, who don’t give head) and I’m on my way back down to London. I will miss her.

 

A stream of Halloween photos that make me delight. And, in my inbox, an email from a hotel so dreadful that I left it almost immediately, and there was little argument from the staff. I was irritated when I saw it, until I saw its sign-off: See you soon, Bacon Arms. Don’t call me that! So rude!