Day 686: The Things We Pray For

Tibetan chanting

I am wrapped in the bacon of success, like a pig in a great big blanket of happy. Success is a cocky little word, and that's not quite what I mean. It also implies some kind of end point, which of course, there isn't. There is in the world, in certain tasks, in throwing a ball through a hoop or placing a slightly guessy finger on just the spot to make a sweet, rich G on the D-string of the cello - but finite success can't apply to being alive, unless a spot-on death is what the question is. 

So if not success, then what? Satisfaction. Enjoyment. Pleasure. Curiosity. Fulfilment. Juice. I've just completed two days running a 'Storytelling for Leaders' workshop with ACCA, an organisation I've worked for before and now hope to again. We were nine, including me, and it was mint. It went better than I could have hoped - because whatever you have planned, it's totally dependent on the engagement, willingness and general openness of the people in the room. 

Very high-pitched scream

If they're not up for giving it a go, partaking, getting in there, then I could be cranking up alchemy in the corner, but it would be worth nothing at all. It's co-creation - a word that can rub me up like an unwanted London Underground grope when used too earnestly, or with 'that face' - but here, it felt like that. Without any one of the people in the room, we could not have done what we did, and the magic came from everyone mudding in. 

I fretted quite something in the preparation of the workshop, and I also learned something. I like to fret. I like to panic (Panic is a route to creativity - a quote off of a TED talk...). I like to breathe the moment in and breathe out what feels like it's needed. At that point, I am easy like the wind. Routine, predictable a plus b plus c, plodding, pressure-free plainness doesn't do it for me. High stakes, a little panic and good friends is what it takes. I am so richly supported in all of what I do, and I am grateful, to people and to bigger things. A co-creation from the start, a person is, and what they do. 

Meditation. Oms.

Today, I had a meeting with two of the most striking, beautiful, powerful faces in my life, and those faces belong to striking, beautiful, powerful women. Tiu de Haan and Rachel Blackman and I had lunch at the top of the Tate Modern. We talked. There wasn't time for everything we wanted to play with. They delighted me. I felt, at times, like I was about to be unzipped, revealed, denounced at any moment, and at others I was wound round with being in the tasty sauce of the moment. 

Speaking of sauce, I have three words for you: Devilled Chicken Livers. And then just moans and sighs. There is something so sensual about liver. Velvety, I think was the word that Tiu chose. I make semi-sexual pleasure noises as I'm eating that. My god, that's taste tantra, that is. My kundalini has finally risen, and all for a bit of spicy chicken offal on toast, at the top of a massive building. Bloody hell, though... I would. 

Tiny, silent Hail Marys

I have started praying. I had a suggestion come that I might try properly bowing down. Not because there is a thing, an offendable deity, a being that needs me to prostrate myself, but because in doing that, I get to notice and enjoy my very smallness in the face of everything, and the importance of doing and being what I am here to do and be is made clear to me. I would say more, but my knees have a date with this pristine hotel carpet, and my face then has one with the plumped up pillow. Night, then. May angels lullaby you, hold you, kiss your cheek (and maybe shave off an eyebrow) as you sleep. 
x

PS: I found a funny http://www.sadanduseless.com/2015/11/funny-wildlife/
2016's good too.