Nine

There's something about the words Gratitude List that doesn't sit well with me. Just call me awkward. It brings back memories of false expressions of gratitude uttered to keep the adults happy at times when I was a silently rebellious child. But I do see the real value of paying conscious, thoughtful attention to the good. So now and again I compile a list.

Here's mine for 2007.

1. Good health. I've had prolonged periods without it. I never forget what a gift - and a potentially fragile one - good health is.

2. My sister. She put up with her temporarily homeless elder sibling plus cat plus litter tray for twelve weeks at the beginning of the year. During this time I was never once made to feel that we were in the way, or a nuisance, or annoying, though at different times we were probably all three. I wrote her a cheque for rent which she refused to cash - it lay gathering dust on the kitchen dresser. It was a needed respite for me, a time of shared suppers, walks along the beach and good humour. She opened her home with grace and generosity and without knowing at the time for how long. I owe her.

3. Space. When you move from a cramped city flat to a 2-bedroom house on two floors, you spend a good deal of time climbing stairs and wandering from room to room. Having lived minimally for so many years there isn't enough furniture to put in all these rooms, mind you, but the guest bed was installed earlier this month.

4. Being able to walk to work. It takes about twenty-five minutes. A pleasant route, bordering the river for much of the way. After years of overcrowded Tube trains this means a lot.

5. Being able to start again. In every single minute of every day. Nothing to do with physical relocation, this one. The gift of the limitless, shining present moment.

6. Friends. Yes.

7. Sunsets and sunrises. They are spectacularly beautiful, almost psychedelic here. Look at the photo. There must be something special about the meteorological conditions - the quality of the light during the day can stop you in your tracks.

8. This blog. In 2007 I finally grasped that I write what I write here for me. The blog is a unique creative outlet, and one I appreciate. I also got rid of the sitemeter - a real act of liberation.

9. Kindness. The quiet acts of kindness that I have received and witnessed this past twelve months. There have been a multitude.

Wistfulness has crept in today, but I'm out celebrating at a friend's house this evening, the first time for several years that New Year hasn't been spent at home. May it bring you happiness and fulfillment, and hope and better times to the planet. Happy New Year.

World View

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hereford_Mappa_Mundi_1300.jpg

Before C caught her train to London yesterday we visited the Mappa Mundi. A last minute decision to fit this in, and I'm so glad we did. It was a first for us both.

According to the official guidebook:

It is the largest and best surviving example of a type of cartography which flourished particularly in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These were works of history, zoology, anthropology and theology, as well as geography, and reflected the contemporary passion for arranging knowledge in comprehensive form .....It summarises the world view and many of the major topics of intellectual interest of the period and may best be regarded as a type of pictorial encyclopaedia, or a map of the medieval mind.

Standing before the Mappa Mundi in the silent room with its subdued lighting leading off the cathedral, it's easy to visualise its two creators (according to the guide this was the likely number), their rounded backs hunched over the vellum, one making the line drawings, one inscribing names. Talking quietly to each other, perhaps, as they worked. You wonder what they believed about the places and stories they were depicting.

The map mixes what we would now call fact and myth indiscriminately, with drawings of actual countries and continents, centaurs, sphinxes, a hermaphrodite, Noah's Ark, a bear, fortresses, cities, rivers and a rhinocerous. And much else besides. All this bound together within a religious rather than geographical framework: Jerusalem is at the centre of the map and Christ sits in judgment over it all at the top, looking down on his creation.

It's a heady, hallucinatory combination and unexpectedly moving. I was struck by the resemblance to a mandala.

***

In the afternoon another friend and I drove to the remains of an Iron Age hill fort a few miles out of town. The bare branches of the beech trees at the summit creaked and sighed in chorus as scudding clouds were swept across the sky by a strong westerly wind. The conservative estimate is that these earthworks have been here for at least two thousand years.

We walked around the perimeter of the fort and then, as the original inhabitants probably did, climbed onto the north-facing earth parapet. There we contemplated far below us the small city with its cathedral, its river and its creeping suburban sprawl. In the distance to our left, Wales and the lead-grey bulk of the Black Mountains, to our right but hidden by trees, the Malverns.

It was almost dark and lights were glowing in nearby houses when we returned home. The kettle was boiled and the remaining mince pies served. I didn't switch on the TV till much later. The contents of the nightly news bulletin yesterday were a vivid reminder that these days the local and the global are sometimes hard to separate ....



More on the Mappa Mundi here and here, and a news report this week on the granting by UNESCO of an entry for the map on its Memory of the World International Register.

Solstice

Light returns. In around twenty four hours from now the Winter Solstice will be exact. Each year I greet its arrival with relief; it may get colder but it won't get darker. This day is the focal point of the holiday for me since my belief system is linked to the rhythms of the natural world - I find it impossible to separate one from the other.

The temperature has been hovering below zero for almost a week, a bitter, damp, Dickensian cold penetrating every single item of clothing and shriveling the bones. On the way home from a holly-and-mistletoe gathering expedition late last Sunday afternoon I strike up a conversation with an elderly angler hunkered down on the riverbank and swathed in a parka. I ask if the river has ever frozen over.

"The last time would be in 1963," he says. "There's been nothing since".

We watch the water flow past, deep and swift after the recent rains, darkening in the fading light.

****

G arrives this weekend to stay for a few days.

We're friends who go back fifteen or so years to when we lived in the same block of flats in West London. We met on the stairs and just hit it off. It was a time of radical upheaval for me and in her company I found that trips to the local arthouse cinema and mugs of Earl Grey tea on a winter afternoon could be effective antidotes to the churning going on inside my head. She left London a few years later and we've stayed in touch.

Walks are on the agenda. DVDs, reading and Scrabble if it's raining really hard.

****

A year ago yesterday I viewed the house I now live in for the first time. Immediately after Christmas I travelled back across country for a second visit. There was a third in early January, followed by the survey. A couple of weeks after that I put in an offer which was accepted. Taking stock twelve months later I can list the following: a reasonably congenial (temporary) job that leaves me time to have a life; health; a home; a garden; a cat; a bicycle; a nucleus of new people to get to know; and enough money in the bank for a while anyway.

Good - if uncertain and precarious - times. I know I'm lucky. And for the future maybe I can simply do the next thing in front of me and then leave the outcome in the hands of Dharma or the Universe or whatever name you want to give it. Maybe that's all I've ever been asked to do.

I hope the next few days are peaceful and grounded ones for you, filled with kindness. While I participate in this addictive, creative exercise called blogging for myself, it wouldn't be the same without your silent presence on the other side of the screen. Whether you're a regular or not, whether you leave a comment or not, I'm very glad you're there.

Merry Christmas.



The western sky really was this colour last Sunday for about one minute. I just happened to have my camera ....

Meme: Seven Random Things

Click to enlarge

I've been tagged by Endment. Her blog is one of the quiet pleasures of cyberspace. If you love poetry and the beauty of wild places, go and visit and give yourself a treat.

This is how you play.

. link to the person who tagged you and post the rules on your blog
. share 7 random or weird things about yourself
. tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs
. let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I've visited the Grand Canyon in winter: November 2000. A chill, grey morning, a few days after the Bush/Gore presidential elections - and nobody knew at that stage which way the result would go. Snow had fallen unexpectedly overnight and there was some doubt whether our bus would even be allowed to enter the National Park. but we made it. There were very few other tourists. The plateau was covered in a thin layer of snow but there seemed to be none in the canyon itself and the North Rim, closed at this time of year, was just visible through the haze, all those miles away.

I hesitate to use the term spiritual experience but this came close. We were only there a few hours. Of all the places I have been, if I had to pick just one for a return visit this would be it, no question. The quality of the silence as we stood in ones and twos on the edge of the canyon was extraordinary.

2. My mother introduced me to astrology as a teenager by showing me the astrological report of my birth chart that she had commissioned when I was born: And this was well before the 1960s. The reading was pretty damn accurate and I've been an amateur practitioner and enthusiast for many years now.

3. I am drawn to water: Although we weren't affected, given the scale of the July floods my house is possibly a tad too close to the river for comfort. But I'm staying put; to live further away from water would just feel wrong.

4. I don't have a car: Yes I know. For a lot of people this is definitely weird. In mitigation I am an extremely nervous driver. I haven't driven for years - and living in big cities as I did for decades you can get away with this. Here though you need wheels to reach where public transport doesn't and, although it feels like a distinctly retrograde step in view of my strong green tendencies, I want to get a car but then use it sparingly. Bicycle and bus are better, for monetary and for planetary reasons.

5. I lived in Paris for almost ten years: I spoke schoolgirl French before I went but the time in France gave me a genuine love of the language and a confidence in using it that hasn't faded in the years since my return. It's not that I speak it perfectly, au contraire, but I've stopped worrying about the errors that I will inevitably make. Communication is what counts.

6. I hanker after a bigger, better camera: With a tripod and a zoom lens for all those wildlife and full moon shots.

7. I can rustle up a very good omelette: Or so they tell me. Aside from that I am a less than wonderful cook but I aim to improve. With that in mind I'm doing the cooking this Christmas.

I hereby tag:

. Leslee at 3rd House Journal
. Kate at Integral Shamanics
. Sonia at Leaves of Grass
. Crafty Green Poet
. Krissie at Message in a Bottle
. Wenda at Daring to Write
. You. I don't want this to be exclusive. It is a game after all, so if you're not on this list and want to play, then go for it. Just leave a note and a link in the comments if you do.

Water, water .....

Days don't get much wetter.

My sister and I had put this Saturday in the diary months ago. We were to meet in Bath, L travelling up from the south coast and me coming south from the Marches. On the way to the station you could see that the river had flooded, covering the watermeadows opposite the cathedral. The driving rain continued as the local train headed south to Newport and as I caught the connection to Bath.

The streets of the town were a maelstrom of shoppers and battling umbrellas and dripping raincoats. L and I headed towards the Christmas Market but couldn't cope. Too many people, too much frustration.

So we did what we should have done in the first place and descended into the Roman Baths of Aquae Sulis, the extraordinary hot springs - part temple to the healing goddess Sulis Minerva, part thermal baths. The Romans merged the existing local deity Sulis with their own Minerva and this spot on the marshy floor of the Avon, where steaming thermal water bubbles from the ground, was sacred.



Forbidding. Sulis Minerva wearing a Gorgon face.




The sacred spring of Sulis Minerva.



Mosaics.



Steam rising. The drainage channel, taking water from the baths towards the nearby river.



The Great Bath. The marks are raindrops on the camera lens.

This was my second visit to the Roman Baths and L's first. Each time I marvel at this steamy elemental world beneath our present one. The price of entry is - in my book - far too high and must deter some visitors, but I would probably pay double if I had to. Bath isn't simply a genteel, well-mannered spa. Nor a university town. Nor a consumer's paradise with excellent shops. At its core it is a holy place, a destination for pilgrims, a site of of hope where an ancient goddess was invoked and petitioned through prayer and animal sacrifices. So very different from Jane Austen and the Regency terraces. And from Santa and Waitrose and W H Smith and French Connection, .

When we resurfaced the rain had stopped. Crowds were emerging from the carol service at the Abbey. A red balloon had escaped and soared and bobbed over the Christmas market.

Becalmed

Waiting for work.

I walk by the river and across the fields. I take photos. I knit. I meet up with friends in town for coffee and a sandwich. I shop for groceries. Latterly I wrap presents and write Christmas cards. My attention span has shrivelled this past year so - sadly perhaps - reading isn't on the agenda. An inward, reflective time nonetheless.

There is at least one job interview in the offing so the period of quiet is unlikely to last. I've needed it; the actual move was in a way the easy part, the emotional and mental assimilation of the new life in new surroundings is taking much longer. My longtime friend and mentor, J, who knows about these things told me to allow three years. OK, I said at the time, not really understanding what he meant.

A few months ago I had my second Saturn Return. As a new cyberfriend, an astrologer, wrote in a recent email.

...Perhaps one of the joys of being past one's Second Saturn Return is a renewed appreciation of the small things in life.

Yes. There is also an - unfamiliar - degree of acceptance, a letting go of a few of the multitude of expectations. A willingness to let life unfold, to let my niche here reveal itself in its own time rather than frantically running around looking for it. I've been reflecting on love as well. The idea of falling in love again is frightening, yet I think I would take the risk if the opportunity arose. Can I let that come to me? Or not. A fantasy perhaps .....

Next year I'd like to be more active in environmental work and maybe take an evening class. Get a car and do some exploring further afield. Today, though, with the approach of winter, I've cut back the roses and the lavender bush and started a compost heap. That's enough.

....

Years ago I was pointed in the direction of the Cavafy poem, Ithaka.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

The complete poem can be found here.

New Worlds

The cash flow is mainly one-way at the moment, i.e. Out rather than In, but I decided that this book was an essential buy, and it popped through the letterbox at the beginning of last week.

Reading the evocative ode to grasses by Crafty Green Poet had brought the matter to a head. I know very little about wild flowers and plants. I want to become botanically literate, to learn the names of the flowers of the fields and hedgerows around here. The photo above, posted on my Flickr site in July after a morning exploring the woods, is indicative. I called it, um, Flower and Fly.

Thanks to my purchase I am reminded that the flower is Red Campion or Silene diocia, "a hairy biennial or perennial of hedgerows, grassy banks and wayside places generally" and that its status is "widespread and common". Wikipedia has a piece which indicates that the crushed seeds were once used as an antidote to snake bites, and following a link I stumbled on the wonderful National Biodiversity Network site which is now on the list of Favourites.

Then there is this photo - taken on the same day - of what I now believe to be Wild Carrot and titled, you've guessed it, Flower and Insects. Wikipedia informs me that its seeds were used as a contraceptive. I'd like to learn more about the insects feeding on the blossoms, but that's a subject for another time.



I feel like a child on Christmas morning. The new book is obviously just a starting point. It has 268 pages of different plant listings with an average of 5 per page. There is so much to learn.

Long ago and far away I made up my mind that I was no good at maths or science and more or less closed the door on all related subjects. So I've never investigated this intricate, extraordinary world that has been right alongside me, even in the concrete fastnesses of the city, and of which I am a part. Until now that is.

And it's started me thinking. What else don't I do? And why?

What other worlds are out there?

First frost

A new friend? Perhaps. We've only known each other a month or two, C and I - not long enough to be comfortable labelling our tentative compatability a full-blown friendship. But we get on and she'd invited me for breakfast and that's a good start.

Her home is an old farmhouse about forty minutes walk away. By road it's quicker, but who would choose that option on a morning like this when you could instead follow the footpath across the meadows by the river? Muffled up in a giant parka, gloves and wellington boots, at just after eight a.m. I head east, tramping towards the rising sun.



It is very cold. The first frost of the winter, a translucent white coating, covers each and every blade of grass and every leaf, shrivels the remaining blackberries and temporarily renders muddy hollows rock-hard. Earth and grass are bleached to a near-monochrome and tiny crystals glint and refract the light. By now my nasal passages are tingling and the cold is starting to seep through the rubber boots. It's definitely a morning to keep on the move but I have to stop at intervals to take in this changed world.

Against the ice-blue sky streaked with thin clouds, a vapour trail, beautiful but lethal, streams out from a speck of an aircraft high, high overhead, and I wonder if the passengers waking from their unsatisfactory transatlantic doze are as dazzled by their early morning vista as I am by mine.

Apart from silent flow of the river, everything is still. The cattle that grazed these fields throughout the summer are long gone and mine are now the only tracks to be seen, animal or human.

As I head up the farm track towards C's house her black and white border collie rushes to the metal gate, barking a welcome.

....

A year ago I wasn't sure that I would be able to sell my London flat. I was temping in a financial boutique (yes, they do exist) in Victoria.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I am here.

More autumn photographs on my Flickr page.

Silver Birch

A shimmer and sway of gold, ochre and green, the silver birch stands ten yards from the kitchen window on the other side of the narrow access road. She moves constantly, this tree (and she is female) even if just one leaf trembles on an otherwise motionless summer afternoon. The sweep of the hanging branches and silver trunk have become familiar, the changes marking the passage of weeks and months since my arrival in April. Some of the dead leaves are fallen, revealing larger patches of sky and the hitherto shady kitchen is, unexpectedly, becoming lighter by the day.

Recent weeks haven't been easy. Stasis. Unmet expectations, money worries, apparent roadblocks. Every so often I make the effort consciously to unclench my jaw. I'm not good with uncertainty.

Ah, but everything passes, or at least can sometimes be softened and soothed. Last night, walking home, I looked up towards the north-east and there was the fiery-tailed comet. This morning the silver birch leaves played hide and seek with the rays of the rising sun.

This afternoon I bought a bicycle. I'm thrilled to bits. Suddenly my feet have wings.

Breaking the Spell

You know when you have been searching and searching for resolution to a situation that eats away at you, that won't let you be and then another human being speaks the truth about what is happening with such concern in their voice and you understand in the sunburst of shock and clarity and relief that follows that thanks to your companion an illusion has been smashed and you have - to a degree - woken up.

I haven't wanted to blog since.

It's always been important to me to respond to comments here and my apologies for not acknowledging the recent ones. In the last few weeks as well there have been a couple of unexpected and heartfelt comments on posts on my old blog. Thank you all.

Whither blogging? I really don't know though I'm playing with the idea of some sort of photoblog for the future. In the meantime you can find a link on the sidebar to my Flickr page which is updated regularly. Be warned: the standard leans towards Happy Snaps rather than Artistic Excellence.

This post is the one I'm most glad I wrote. The final two paragraphs still apply.

I'll end with a quotation from Thomas Merton:

In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.

Ambiguity

The Arundel Tomb, Chichester Cathedral
www.newi.ac.uk

The happening that prompted the previous post started me thinking about the Philip Larkin poem, An Arundel Tomb. I lived near Chichester for several years and both the tomb and the cathedral were familiar sights.

Larkin had the reputation of being both misogynistic and morose yet he wrote here one of the best known twentieth century poems on love. Does he believe what he states in the last line? Or is he hinting that we are all willing participants in a collective delusion? Probably both. He remains ambiguous, giving nothing away, which is part of the appeal in view of my own feelings - a queasy mix of anxiety and yearning - on the subject.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

It's a beautiful poem. The whole thing, plus some helpful notes, can be found here.

Hidden

I tend to overestimate my capacities. I'd planned on painting three rooms but it will be an achievement just to finish off the lounge. Being home ill and contemplating someone else's choice of wallpaper a few weeks ago served as the catalyst for this spurt of d.i.y.

One of the unexpected bonuses of living here is the little tool hire centre at the end of the road. I hired a steam-based wallpaper stripper for the day, got it home then had to carry it back again through the pouring rain because, oh the shame, I couldn't open the pressure release cap. Adrian, who was behind the counter, patiently and kindly showed me how. Turn, then press down, then turn again.

It's a sweaty business, holding the steaming plate to the wall, peeling off strips of hot, damp paper then scraping the residue with a putty knife, moving from ceiling to floor, one small section at a time. For a couple of hours I work and listen to Radio 4 over the hiss of steam. Bombs. Floods. Alan Johnston. The Archers. I'd completed one wall and had moved onto the second when I saw them. Words beneath the wallpaper.

Ally loves Caddy
1985

The same phrase repeated three times, written large on the plaster, a black felt tip pen in an exuberant hand. Near the ceiling, half way down the wall and just above the skirting board.

In 1985 the house was three years old. Caddy and Ally were the new owners perhaps? Unusual names: Ally might be short for Alastair, but what about Caddy? Did Caddy love Ally just as much, are they still together, did they have children, are they happy?

Did the writer ever think that a stranger would read these words?

Could I possibly believe that, in some form or other, love has been written into the fabric of this house?

I'll be sanding the walls next week, taking care to leave the words intact, then painting them with Dulux Hint of Apricot.

Heightened Security

No, this cat isn’t mine, the picture wasn’t posed and it was taken here in the UK - in spite of that sign.

Yoga

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.- Rumi

First time here. The classes are held in a martial arts centre and our room is huge with pink, squishy rubber flooring and strange pieces of black padded equipment along the walls. An air conditioner whirrs somewhere behind me. It is needed today; the weather is warm and ominously humid. On my right a young woman lies on her back, relaxing. Further over a grandmotherly type talks to her neighbour. I count heads: two men and fifteen women, all shapes and ages.

Susanna, the teacher, reminds me of an oriental dancer; her tiny frame is curvy and muscular and she exudes grace and competence. I introduce myself, something I seem to be doing a lot these days. We talk about my physical condition. I tell her I'll be fine.

This yoga differs from that of the Sivananda tradition, the one I know best. Here the postures flow into each other, almost like tai-chi. I have to concentrate hard in order to coordinate breath and movement and a couple of times Susanna comes over and gently adjusts an arm or a leg.

Let me tell you, it’s an emotional business when the body reawakens, when rigid muscles are asked to stretch and release. I’m awash with frustration at my own awkwardness and can't shake an illogical sense of having lost something irreplaceable during the months of inactivity. Tears aren't far away. What keeps me here is a belief in the power of the asanas, these tools for expansion and contraction.

It's simple. They return me to the body. To an awareness of living muscle, sinew and breath. And if I'm looking for deepest presence, this is where I start.

****

The path home after the class leads past the cathedral. Groups of teenagers sprawl on the grass beneath the lime trees and the sweet yet slightly acrid scent of the blossom hangs in the heavy air.

Paperweight

Illness. It's been like living in the paperweight. I'm getting better but it's a slow process.

Back soon I hope.

Fish

The river sweeps out into a wide curve as it leaves town. On the longer, southern side the water is deeper and there are more shadowy, hidden places. The steep bank here is bordered by a line of grey-green willows and overgrown with tall, impossibly lush, grass. There are clumps of nettles too, and elder, and foaming meadowsweet.

Early morning stillness can be deceptive. Fish, dozens of them and some quite large, gather beneath the overhanging branches of one of the willows, away from the midstream tug of the current and safe from human intrusion.

Spreading circles on the surface provide the first clue. Then, an occasional splash.

And you peer down through the grass and nettles to where the delicate branches of the tree touch the river. In the water smooth cold bodies, dark and mysterious, weave and glide around each other in an unchoreographed dance, their shapes refracting in the ripples then reforming.

Another world. Beautiful and a little disquieting.

Snapped

Lately there seems to be so many news reports of children. Lost children, injured children.

The one that I can’t get out of my head is the incident of the City high-flyer who has battered his two year old child to the brink of death. She is on life support with her mother at her bedside, he apparently is on suicide watch. The news bulletins say that he and his wife lived in a million pound apartment, that he is reported by his colleagues to be friendly and sociable, that neighbours say that he doted on his little girl. Other colleagues said that he had been under great stress recently. Something snapped.

Over the years as a London temp I worked in international financial organizations where I got to know many men like him. The new Eurocrats, young, multilingual, ambitious, driven. Often, though not always, charming, seemingly nerveless. I envied them sometimes, their lives of seeming confidence and financial ease.

So this hits home. I think of Georges and Pierre from Belgium, Anders from Stockholm. And many others.

We live in a society that worships the outer. It's hard not to be seduced by this false religion and I'm obviously as prone to judge by appearances as anyone else. But we don't know the truth - the vulnerability and the fragility - of other people's lives, we really don't.

We can't pass judgment.

Found

Picture from the Design Factory website. Click to enlarge.

We found this tiny cafe/art gallery with exhibits by three different artists: paintings, pottery and - the ones that caught my eye - textile art by Laura McCafferty.

At first you smile because the subject matter is often tongue-in-cheek, the figures well-drawn (from life), and the artist's skill with textiles and embroidery and the use of colour and pattern make them a sensory treat.

Then you look more closely. Groups of middle aged ladies chatting or playing bingo, a weary woman on the Tube, a solitary man in a downmarket cafe.

In other words, the human condition. These are works of pathos as well as humour and - as often is the case - each emphasises the other. Ordinary people talking, dancing, staring into space. Getting by. Laura McCafferty's affection for her subjects is unexpectedly moving, and much as I'm attracted to them I'm not sure whether I could cope with one of these collages on my wall. Her observational skills cut too close to the bone for comfort.

I can't get the link to the artist's website to work on my laptop, but I tried on the work computer during the lunch hour and it was just fine. Browser problems no doubt so I will leave it up. Better anyway to see textile art in real life - the texture and substance of the cloths used are so vital to the finished work - but the links do give a flavour.

Imagination

There are other areas, other towns, that would have better fitted the bill if it were a purely logical choice. I could have bought something cheaper in the north of England or found somewhere nearer my family further south.

Forty something years ago I first came to this place. I was twelve, maybe thirteen, very shy, but oddly attracted to horse-riding. I wasn't a good rider - too nervous - but my nights and days were often soaked in dreams of galloping bareback across the prairies, long black hair streaming behind me. I was probably more Thelwell than Pocahontas but imagination is a wonderful thing.

In pursuit of my dream I persuaded my parents to let me go on a pony trekking holiday in the Welsh border country. My father deposited me at the collection point and us girls, all strangers, piled into a mini-van to be driven south towards a series of long, bare mountain ridges that straddle the border. I was by now having serious misgivings.

And then, I remember that the sun came out and the van started to climb. We rounded a bend and I stared across a narrow valley at rounded slopes, green dappled with russet bracken, tinged with gold in the late afternoon light. Apprehension and reserve were momentarily knocked out of me by wonder. I couldn't believe how beautiful and other this land was. I was a child of the flatlands with little experience of geography above 300 feet, and this was fairytale country. All that week - it was a wet one - astride Cocoa the mountain pony, I silently absorbed the mountains and the deep, misty valleys.

These mountains have haunted me ever since.

****

And now I live a dozen miles away, in a market town on the river plain. When I walk in the nearby fields I can see the ancient granite ridges, blue silhouettes in the west against the setting sun. That's Wales, people tell you as a visitor. A different place.

Today the terrible border battles are long gone. On the local high street you hear sing-song Welsh accents mixed with the rounded English vowels (and the occasional conversation in Polish). My local supermarket sells bottles labelled Llaeth Cymraeg. These days in (because of?) the consumer society, for all the rise in regional nationalism, we blend and merge.

I've always been fascinated by borderlands, duality. I love Montreal, and to a lesser extent, Brussels, for the same reason. I wanted to live somewhere where there was flux, where two realities merge to form a third.

Now I'm here it's dawning on me that I have no idea of what the future holds. Really, none at all. It feels a little like being high though not necessarily ecstatic. Success. Failure. Who will judge?

I breathe. I do the next thing to be done. I feel. I wait. And as Dale puts it - beautifully - I listen.

Heart of a Rose

My camera makes me so happy sometimes. I wish I could convey the perfume.

Click to enlarge.

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I have time to think. That is the great, the greatest luxury. I have time to be. Therefore my responsibility is huge. To use time well and to be all that I can be in the years left to me. This does not dismay. The dismay comes when I lose the sense of my life as connected (as if by an aerial) to many, many other lives that I do not even know. The signals go out and come in all the time.

May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude

Written in pre-cyberspace days, the paragraph above seems all the more relevant now in the era of blogs when we are connected to many, many lives that we don't know, and some that - in a way - we do. May Sarton sums up the challenge and opportunity of growing older as a woman alone so well that I'm tempted to stop writing and just post the photograph and the quotation.

It's my birthday today but a difficult phone call earlier this week has left me pensive rather than celebratory. This morning there are cards and presents, and a special lunch is planned for Saturday. Though very grateful, right now I feel a little detached from it all.

I've jotted down a Wish List for the coming year. In reality everything on it could be reduced to the yearning for a generous, unbarricaded heart.

The rest follows. Minute by minute.

****

This morning is humid and slightly overcast. It's very warm even at this early hour. The cat rubs his furry face against my shins and purrs. I need to feed him then get ready for work. Normally I dress in neutral colours but today I plan to wear favourite deep fuschia blouse with the grey fleck trousers. I've lived another year, a turbulent one, and there is value in acknowledging the fact.

Rituals matter, even ones as trivial as a fuchsia blouse.

Today is shared as a birthday with Tamar, my blogging "twin". Many Happy Returns to both of us.

Carwash

Stopping at the service station for petrol.

Waiting in the passenger seat, hypnotised by the colour and power and wetness of the carwash in action a few yards away.

Suddenly wanting to be sucked in and soaked and sudsed and rinsed and scrubbed and buffed and ejected onto the forecourt.

Gleaming.

Mute

Silence:
something is lacking:
a skillful generosity,
a freedom from constraints,
a dyslexia - or
perhaps even
a tourette's - of the imagination,

these last, after all,
being rule-breakers.

I wonder:
will the words escape
early one morning
to play games of hide-and-seek
around the flinty rocks
beside the stream,
in the long grass of summer?

On that day,
(if it comes)
oh how they will tumble and laugh,
shout and fight and turn cartwheels -
these children
my words.

Neighbours

See, how straight and square they stand on their legs.
See, what fine sagacious eyes.

- The Ox-Tamer, Walt Whitman

It is the time of year for things Taurean and anyway my four-legged neighbours fascinate me. They are a mixed bunch, some a beautiful shade of toffee fudge, a few black, the majority brown and white. The colouring of this last group is so subtle you need to see them in real life to appreciate the tones: cappucino blending into a smokey, grey-brown around the head and neck.

No raging bulls here. Who could be afraid of such peaceable beasts? They turn and watch me approach. A couple of them start to wander over in my direction then stop and stare. No threat, just a slow, incurious curiosity.

Oh, and I've learned something I didn't know. When cows, or bullocks in this case, get up they do so hindquarters first.

I've obviously been a townie for too long.

The rest of Whitman's visual, almost mythic, poem is here.

Kiva

I have Kate from one of my favourite blogs, Dating God , to thank for putting me onto Kiva.

What is it? In the words of the website:

We let you loan to the working poor. Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.

I've just chipped in with my first loan to a partner. You don't have to pledge a large amount, you can start small, and if, like me, you live permanently with a queasy sense of financial insecurity, then participating in something like this is a pretty good reminder that some problems are relative.

There's more at these links about microfinance or microcredit. Kiva certainly doesn't solve the problem of world poverty but perhaps it might be a small part of the answer. It is an internet-based outfit, so imagine what might happen if even 1 blogger in 100 (or 1,000) loaned a small amount.

A human connection is made as well. Go on the Kiva website and you'll see what I mean.

Practicalities and Realities

I’ve got a job, four days a week for a nine-month contract. After several months of living off savings this has to be A Good Thing.

- It is no longer sunny. I’m still glad to be here.

- Almost cried with frustration today as I tried to get the photocopier function of my printer to work. Five months of having the damn thing in storage is enough time for me to forget about such details and my tolerance of computer equipment snafus is very low. I thought I’d found a local computer support person but he has stopped answering emails or telephone calls. Perhaps he’s fled the country. And I can't find the printer instruction book. Lost in transit no doubt.

- I used to think if ever I sold my soul it would be to a plumber or anyone who can make sense of flatpack furniture assembly instructions. I am adding computer support person to the list.

- As of today I’m still getting my photocopies done at the library at 20p a sheet.

- On a different, and very basic topic, does anyone who has travelled or moved home with a cat have any tips on how to persuade their lord and master to return to using the bosom of Mother Earth for, um, elimination purposes after several months of litter tray luxury?

Beltane Moon

The air was still warm at 8.00pm. I took a walk by the river as the Beltane Full Moon floated up from the folds of the wooded hills on the far side of the railway line. The chorus of birdsong - blackbird, thrush and others that I could not identify - already loud, seemed to reach a crescendo but maybe this was my imagination ....

The countryside hereabouts is soft, feminine, with the curves of its rounded hills, the meandering river and green fields dotted with grazing cattle. It luxuriates with life: animals, birds, insects, trees, plants. So extraordinary, to watch the moon rise in the midst of it all.

I'm totally bewitched by the beauty of this place. Yes, the sun is shining, it's May, and yes I know it isn't like this in January because I've been here. It's often grey and damp and you can't see the tops of the hills because they're enveloped in mist. And of course the excitement of new love, for places and people, has to give way to something else eventually and I don't know what that will look or feel like. But today it doesn't matter.

The Kindness of Others

Contemplate the kindness of others in your life, the Buddhist monk said to the fifteen of us.

One evening a week he drives over from a centre in Birmingham to conduct a teaching and meditation session in the local Quaker meeting house. The previous week, my first, he talked about making a decision to change the mind. Tonight, dauntingly, it was the need to cherish all living beings.

It doesn’t matter if the intention of the grumpy shop assistant was not one of kindness, you have benefited from the fact that she put the tin of baked beans on the shelf and accepted your money in exchange. From birth to death your life is upheld by the good deeds of others. You are a tiny cell in the body of creation, distinct yet united with the rest of life, so what you do can create benefit for others as you yourself have been supported.

Indeed, you can thank those people who require you to develop patience and tolerance and forgiveness. They are helping you to develop spiritually.

And you will sooner or later become enlightened.

I think about wounds inflicted and received, about Iraq and Darfur, about cruelty to children and animals and feel a pang of fear in my chest as the mind contracts and rebels. Can the practice of such concepts really, really, hold and redeem all the wickedness and misunderstanding abroad in the world? But something peaceful in the heart, in our teacher's gentleness and humour and in the quality of the meditative silence won't let me go. I pull back into the quiet. I am willing for now to take it on trust.

The homework was to reflect on the kindness of others in our daily lives. A couple of helpers came in with trays of peppermint tea and chocolate cake, and we tentatively started to talk among ourselves.

I will go back.

Home. Changes. Friends.

If I lose my direction, I have to look for the North Star, and I go to the north. That does not mean that I arrive at the North Star. I just want to go in that direction.
Thich Nhat Hanh

It’s been over a week already. I walk from room to room in this end-of-terrace house on the edge of town, trying to make my mark by placing familiar possessions in unfamiliar surroundings. The new refrigerator has arrived and the washing machine is due next week.

The ground floor already feels a little like home: books in the bookcase, the kitchen with saucepans and plates arranged in the cupboards, the sofa along one wall in the lounge where it catches the late afternoon sun. The remaining unopened cases and boxes are confined to the first floor where they sit reproachfully in the shadows awaiting attention.

The process of moving has been by turns disorienting, exciting, terrifying. At first glance, yes, life has changed. But I’ve moved before, traveled widely, shifted from home to home, country to country. Searching. Restless. All that's happened this past twelve months is that I’ve been able to adjust outer circumstances to form an apparently less constricting framework.

Real change is more subtle and requires greater skill. Acceptance of what has been irretrievably lost - it was never mine to hold - of what is and what can yet be gained. Trust. Daring to be happy, in spite of, because of, any reasons not to be.

****

J came by yesterday for supper, armed with cuttings of chives from her garden for mine. An evening of catching-up. When she left she took with her most of my emptied cardboard boxes for use as mulch on her smallholding. Nothing wasted.

****

The railway line that inaccurately traces the border between England and Wales lies less than a quarter of a mile away. Every twenty minutes or so the silence is broken by the muffled whoosh and rumble of a speeding train heading south to Cardiff and beyond, north to Manchester or Holyhead.

Their rhythmic, transitory presence is unexpectedly reassuring.

Snapshots of trains. Aged six with my mother, waving to the engine driver at the local level crossing. The first overseas trip aged thirteen, periodically lifting the curtain in the wagon-lit, enraptured, as we flashed through a succession of dark, shuttered German towns. Years later, in love, absorbing into myself the wail of the giant freight trains creeping and clanging through Flagstaff on a cold November night. The daily Parisian commute throughout the 1980s, glancing up at the destination board as I padded through through the Gare du Nord. Some days I was sorely tempted to take a different train, one destined for Moscow via Berlin and Warsaw. Or Amsterdam. Or Istanbul.

I seem to stay close to home these days, wherever it may be. Having long-distance trains pass nearby is a gift, rather like being unexpectedly reunited with old friends.

Photograph: a fragment of the Berlin Wall, now outside the Imperial War Museum.