New place

I'm blogging here now. Come on over.

www.wanting2behere2.blogspot.com

Signs and Sitting

If you are meditating and somewhere within earshot interesting things are going on, you will find your mind going there to check it out. No problem. If you do not resist the process, your attention will of its own accord return to your focus - your breath, or your own thoughts and sensations.

Lorin Roche
Meditation Made Easy, Page 123

I've been tagged by Neith with the Astroblogger meme. Variations of this have been floating around for a little while but this is a first for me. While I don't blog about astrology per se (not knowledgeable or orderly-minded enough) I am a keen amateur practitioner so, stealing Leslee's phrase, this blog has something of an astroflavour.

Here it is:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people

It's been necessary to bend the rules. Never Let Me Go was definitely the nearest book to hand, but only has two short paragraphs at the end of a chapter on page 123 and too few sentences. At a second attempt I found three sentences on page 123 of a basic beginner's meditation guide. This book's great virtue is the emphasis on keeping things simple and enjoying the practice, and given the large dollop of inquisitive Gemini in my birthchart plus a mercurial Virgo ascendant the passage quoted is particularly helpful.

Unless I'm ill or travelling I sit pretty much every morning. Just for fifteen minutes or so but it's become an intrinsic part of my day, While I'm not a Buddhist - sometimes I wish I could sign up for something but that's a topic for another post - their meditation techniques work for me. So there I am in front of my altar, the thinking part galloping into the past and future, the meditative part noticing the fact then trying to bring the focus back to the breath. Where it stays for at least five seconds.

In the silence and space thoughts and feelings rise to the surface then fall away. Insights occur and truth asks to be faced. For this quarter of an hour I am physically quiet and still even if inwardly agitated and there is comfort and strength in that. It can be very peaceful sitting at the window with the faint background sounds of my neighbours starting their days. Very, very occasionally I do approach that place that lies beyond thought. Other days there is restlessness and frustration and the whole thing seems as rewarding and fulfilling as watching paint dry, yet I'd no more leave the house without brushing my teeth than skip this.

I'm groping for a final sentence to explain why I sit. Because I must. Just because.

****

I'm not going to tag anyone but if you'd like to do the meme, with any slant or none, leave a note in the comments.

Perspectives

. Compared to the daunting size of some London art galleries the Welsh national collection is built on a human scale. The few rooms are relatively small so it is possible to do them all justice in a couple of hours and then, if you wish, to make a day of it and take in the museum part of the building. Just how museums and galleries ought to be. Having been duly beguiled by Renoir and rendered nostalgic by Sisley, I was jolted awake by a Welsh artist new to me, Kevin Sinnott. For a start, who could resist a painting with such a title? I love its size and energy, the crazy perspective and the unanswered questions, e.g. Why aren't they holding hands?

. After many months of almost no book reading, I've just finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Set in a dark version of the 1990s the story unfolds at a slow, painstaking pace and at the end left me uncomfortable but, goodness, it should be read. It won't be a hardship either as the book is beautifully written and from one perspective it is purely about human relationships and how we are each of us influenced and dominated by our pasts. That which isn't explained or which just filters through - to the reader as to the main protagonist and her fellow students - is the most chilling part of all.



. The visit to the Welsh national gallery allowed enough time to take in the Cardiff Bay development. The photo was taken at the Water Sculpture (yesterday without the water) and I wasn't the only photographer to be attracted by its hall-of-mirrors potential. It can make you visible yet invisible. A little like a blog.

More photos here.

Arrival

The tulips were blowsy and past their best that lunchtime last April when our van pulled up outside the house. But the splash of colour of the two-toned red and yellow flowers in the front garden was welcoming as I struggled out of the passenger seat clutching the cat basket. I had hardly slept the previous night and it had been a four hour journey. The cat - poor thing - had protested loudly until we reached Ross, when he had no choice but to give in to the call of nature. We pulled over and Bill went for a cigarette while I did the necessary. (My sister had the bright idea of using incontinence pads - one to start the journey with plus a couple of replacements in case of such an occurrence - at the base of his basket).

l was apprehensive that I wouldn't be able to find the key for the front door - the bunch of keys we had collected half an hour earlier from the estate agent's offices in town seemed more suited in size to Fort Knox than a modest semi. My fears were, of course, unjustified - it transpired that there were three copies of each one. Sally the estate agent, at probably half my age, had asked if I would mind waiting while a colleague popped out to the local florist to buy a pink hyacinth as a house-warming present. This may have been company policy but I was touched and found it a niche on a sunny windowsill.

After unloading the boxes and cartons Bill set off home to Sussex. The furniture in storage locally was delivered shortly afterwards. Water, gas and electricity all worked. I released the cat from his portable prison, drank a mug of tea, read the meters and made arrangements with a friend to go shopping for a washing machine and fridge the following day. Oh, and did a bit of unpacking. All surprisingly straightforward after the stress of the previous months.



That freezing weather of a few weeks back is past - for now - sunlight floods the garden and a strong wind blows from the south west. The daffodils are in full flower and those red and yellow tulips are opening. Nearly eleven months later the sight of them once again outside the kitchen window, drawn upwards inexorably through the dark earth by warmth and light, leaves me jubilant and relieved.

This spring the signs of change and rebirth have particular resonance.

Moderation

An interesting week and it looks as if the coming seven days will have their moments as well. Nothing like a total lunar eclipse to stir things up. None of it bears blogging about for the moment, but it's been a reminder that life is nothing if unpredictable.

Thanks for the comments on the previous post. One of the things that gives blogging its fascination is the ability that it affords to chronicle and celebrate a few moments of an icy, dank February morning in a country town in the Marches. The creation of a post allows me the space to contemplate and experience my own world more deeply and thoughtfully and I can share the moments with others worldwide, most of whom I will probably never meet. Blogging as a creative and meditative tool, creating an invisible spider's web of links across the planet as we exchange pieces of our lives. And there are millions of us doing it. All those webs.

I need to limit my time on the internet though often I'm tempted not to. Mostly I manage to find the balance. When I don't my wellbeing suffers. It comes back to the concept of moderation. Not my natural home, and not where I've spent a good part of my life, but, heaven knows, the alternative is counterproductive. I'm getting older and increasingly body, mind and soul need me to aim for a state of equilibrium, however unfamiliar this may feel. I can't afford to waste these years.

****

Because I can't resist, a couple of other photographs of those murky, beautiful days. To see enlarged versions of these or any of the pictures on the blog, click on the photograph and go into Flickr, then select All Sizes.

Monochrome (almost)

We've been experiencing some of the lowest night temperatures in the UK.



Clear night skies and heavy frosts combined with early morning fog means the dawn becomes a study in shades of grey.



Any stretch of open water that doesn't move freezes over ....



... and the pigeons wait for the sun to break through.

When it does the contrast is almost shocking. Colour everywhere. Bright. Clear. Glowing.

New Job

I think it's going to work out. I'm getting to grips with the charity's fiendishly complex database. Remembering names and telephone extensions. The people seem nice and the short working week is good.

Part of the job is to upload information onto the computer system and it's impossible not to be aware of the human beings behind the statistics. Elderly men and women in nursing homes, in most cases suffering from dementia, who can no longer care for themselves and whose families can no longer care for them. As I work I wonder about their lives, the contrast between then and now, whether they are aware of what has happened to them.

And what about the families who are forced to take decisions for which they cannot know the outcome, to choose between painful, often less-than-perfect options? Unlike a few of my friends I've never had to face this situation. Both my mother and grandmother were as sharp as tacks when they died in their eighties; my father was confused but not to the extent that he couldn't function.

So. I've started a routine of wishing each person peace as I load the details of their lives onto the database. It's the one thing that I can do.

****

Today has been a peaceful and ordered one, productive without being manic, social but with quiet times. Most of the items on the list I drew up this morning have been ticked off. Feelings come and go. It's OK.

Photograph: Eastgate Clock, Chester.

New Moon

My father, outwardly the most prosaic of men, had a ritual that he kept religiously. Once a month, when he spotted the new moon, he would stop what he was doing and turn over the loose change in his pocket - I can remember the jingle of coins to this day. I think you were probably supposed to make a wish as well but he never talked about that.

Homeward bound, yesterday late afternoon. I had a window seat in the half empty carriage.

I think it was after the train pulled out of Wrexham that the first thin curve of the moon appeared. Hardly noticeable at first in the late afternoon sky, as the day dimmed and the sun sank towards the horizon the new moon's light grew; she seemed suspended above our little train as we hustled south towards Shrewsbury. Now and again her image was reflected in a river or a pond ..... a cool light in the dark land.

We rushed through Craven Arms, Church Stretton, then Ludlow, past hedges and fields, factory farms and gardens - ugliness and beauty one and the same now - the hills much closer here, large black shapes looming out of the night. I could hear the rumble of conversation a few rows back; a woman read a newspaper on the other side of the aisle. Occasionally the ticket inspector came by. For the last hour of the journey I leant back in my seat and watched the crescent moon, from time to time with a lump in my throat. Impossible to focus on anything else.

At some point there was a shift. The heaviness and anxiety of the past weeks softened and lightened.

Spring Walk

The weather offered a foretaste of April: soft rain alternating with fleeting bursts of sunlight. Sometimes both at once. With the new job starting soon this week has a poignant, end-of-the-holidays feel about it, free days measured as a diminishing and precious commodity. After an inactive weekend and in response to a gnawing urge to make the best of Monday, mid-morning I set off westward along the riverbank heading for Breinton Springs, a few miles away.

The narrow path was so slippery with mud and puddles the immediate task was to stay upright. A couple of hikers - a middle aged man and woman - picking their way gingerly through the mud from the other direction, smiled as they went by, the three of us cheerfully bonded in self-inflicted adversity. It didn't matter. The mist of raindrops was so gentle on my face, it resembled a cool caress.

Suddenly a large buzzard rose over the bare branches of the surrounding trees. He was joined by two others - a male and a female - and a loud dog-fight (for want of a better term) broke out overhead between the two males. They came together repeatedly, clashing then withdrawing, their eerie, mewing cries reverberating over the valley.

The losing male flew off, vanquished.



The spring. A trickle of clear water issues from a horizontal crack in a tree-covered escarpment of red standstone a dozen yards from the river. No habitation and no signs to speak of, though it appears on the local maps, just a grassy access track leading towards it from the Wye Valley walk. A mysterious, intimate, feminine place if you overlook the discarded cigarette packets. I hate litter. I couldn't bear to leave them there, so scooped up the sodden cardboard and found a rubbish bin later.

Homewards via a different tracery of paths and lanes. A steep climb then a track leading past cider apple orchards incongruously protected by high, barbed-wire fencing. To the right the wooded drop down to the river, in the distance to the left, green fields and hills.

The rain had more or less stopped and everywhere were visual pleasures: the clump of wild snowdrops in an abandoned orchard .....



the warm, red brick and classic lines of a farm outhouse ....



....and a very faint rainbow's end in an adjoining field. A minute or two later it had vanished completely.



More pictures from the walk here.

****

I'm looking forward - cautiously - to the new job. It's a simple, part-time admin position, but the department provides a service that's indirectly useful to the wider community and my soon-to-be colleagues seem friendly and congenial. It will be a relief to have a small but steady income and a definite, though not stifling, structure to the week. I need both badly.

Possibility

It went so well.

I hadn't given any kind of massage for over a year. Force majeure up to a point, but all kinds of instincts of inertia and withdrawal were tucked away behind the excuse of undeniable upheavals. I've missed my handful of London clients badly and have been mulling over whether I should abandon massage altogether. You're all right on the practical side but you keep forgetting the theory, I told myself. Compared to others you're probably not that good. Maybe it's time to let it go. I turned down a couple of tentative approaches.

Recently a new acquaintance asked for a clothed head and shoulders massage. This time with some reluctance I said yes. So yesterday, a day of gales with the wind hurling handfuls of rain against the window, I donned my waterproofs, cycled the fifteen minutes to her house, chatted, took a short case history and began.

It all came back. She'd never had a head massage before so I explained the process. Body and hands and voice remembered and I discovered once again - like meeting up with a long-lost friend - that place of stillness and peace beneath the physical strokes. I watched her face soften as I worked the muscles of her shoulders (trapezius, levator scapulae), neck (sternocleidomastoid, splenius capitis) and scalp (occipitalis, frontalis). I probed beneath the occipital ridge, listening to the silence surrounding and holding both of us, sensing the return of my own confidence. Before I left we agreed on further sessions.

She was happy. So was I.

There are many things I don't have a talent for: mathematics, rock climbing, conceptual thought, dressmaking, ballroom dancing ..... That's fine. But I have been horribly unsure and cripplingly perfectionistic about the abilities I do possess. Nature? Nurture? Karma? It doesn't matter. All I know is that it would be the ultimate betrayal not to go ahead and use them.

Urban Gardening

Seem to be doing a lot of blogging lately. It comes and goes.

On Sunday I caught the first programme of a new series on BBC2 TV, Around the World in 80 Gardens. We started in Central America. I loved it all but it was the section on the urban gardening movement in Cuba - something I knew absolutely nothing about - that really grabbed me. If you wonder how city dwellers will manage when the oil starts to run out and it is no longer economically viable to transport food long distances, this may be at least part of the answer.

From necessity after the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent withdrawal of aid, in the early 1990s the Cubans set to and started growing vegetables on spare pockets of land in urban environments in order to feed themselves. And, amazingly - to me anyway - the project is a success. Locally grown, organic fruit and vegetables feeding urban communities.

Here's an excerpt from a longer piece on the Cuban urban gardens:

For the vast majority of urban Cubans since the Revolution, food came from a grocery store or supermarket. Growing food was generally considered a part of campesino (peasant) life, left behind on the move to the city. To encourage small scale food production in urban areas, the government gave unused land to anyone who wanted to cultivate it. Havana, with a fifth of the island's population, was a priority area for urban food production .....

This all created, almost overnight, a new urban gardening culture. By the mid 1990's there were over 28,000 huertos in Havana city province, run by 50-100,000 individuals. Some of this new army of gardeners could remember farming with their parents 35 years ago, before they moved to Havana. For many it was an entirely new occupation.

Huerto is Spanish for 'kitchen garden' and these are the equivalent of allotments or smallholdings in Britain. They may be individual, family or collective and some are attached to institutions such as day care centres and schools. They range in size from postage stamp to two or more hectares. Garden clubs are comparable to allotment societies ... there are more than 19,000 individuals organised into more than 800 clubs throughout Havana.

Read the whole thing. The programme is being repeated tonight at 7.00pm on BBC2.

It's probably not a one size fits all solution - there must be other factors involved: culture, climate, population density, social cohesion. A reminder nonetheless that homo sapiens can and will adapt in order to survive. When we have to.

Photo: http://www.cosg.org.uk/gardens.htm

Fair Helena

Photohunters theme: Old Fashioned.

With two additional rooms to furnish I’m keeping my eyes peeled these days for pictures and wallhangings that I like and which fit into the budget. Attracted initially by the carving on the frame I spotted this delight yesterday, hidden behind a pile of other donated pictures and assorted bric-a-brac in a local charity shop. The tattered, yellowing label on the back reads:

RACKHAM, Arthur (1867-1939)
“A Midsummer’s Night Dream”
Original Colour Print. 1908.

A quick search on Google and I found an alternative name for the print: Fair Helena.

Standing alone and watchful in the midnight wood she is discreetly sensuous, this Helena. The gauzy fabric of her robe is draped to show her figure to advantage. Tall and elegant, rather Edwardian with her bare shoulders, plunging neckline and mass of upswept, slighly dissheveled hair, she possesses more than a hint of Pre-Raphaelite wildness.

I remember hearing of Arthur Rackham as a child but can't remember where and when. I’ve just spent, or perhaps wasted, a fascinating couple of hours following links on the net and discovering what a talented and imaginative illustrator he was.

Have I made a profit on my purchase? Possibly. I paid £2 and from its condition this particular print looks to be an old one. Prints of Fair Helena seem to be selling for around US$70 online and I will ask C, a professional artist, for her opinion. Helena's not for sale though; she hangs above my bookcase, spreading enchantment. I must re-visit A Midsummer Night's Dream.

48 Hours (Updated)

In the last 48 hours the following has happened:

a) I've had a severe stomach upset (following a dodgy jacket potato and tuna mayonnaise from a previously reliable stall in town).

b) The hot water tap in the kitchen jammed yesterday evening. A high pressure stream of hot water thundered into the sink and spilled over onto the floor. I tried to turn the stopcock under the sink to stop the flow but it was too stiff. I phoned three emergency plumbers and none could come out till this morning. After an anguished phone call a friend's husband (thank you, T and C, thank you, thank you ) came over at 8.00pm and shut off the faulty tap. He will buy and fit a replacement on Saturday.

c) On T's departure I switched on the gas boiler which I had closed down when the flooding started. After half an hour it was apparent that there was no hot water or heating. I rang British Gas at 9.00pm yesterday and they arranged for an engineer to call this morning.

d) We had a city-wide electricity power cut this morning just as the engineer arrived. He was sorry but he was unable to do anything without power. I rang British Gas at 11.00 am today when the electricity was restored and an engineer will call again tomorrow.

e) I have a job interview this afternoon

I think Mars retrograde has something to do with all this, but that's just me.
I don't know what I would have done without T.
Taking out Three Star insurance cover on the boiler was a good idea.
I'm thankful for two fan heaters and an electric shower.
British Gas's efficiency has been a pleasant surprise.
If I get this job it won't be because of my calm demeanour.

This afternoon I'm in a state of mild shock at how fragile the structure of my so-called self-sufficiency actually is. It's perilously easy to take so much for granted - good health or utilities or whatever - for so much of the time. I'm contemplating our mutual interdependence. No exceptions. None.

Update: I got the job.

Hilltop

One day long ago
a yellow kite tugged and soared
straining for freedom,

a boy unaware
of our presence in his duel
with the cunning wind.

....

The river runs fast and angry and the watermeadows have flooded. I'll need to take the long way round to the railway station this morning. The heavy skies have their own beauty but it isn't for me today. Too much grey. Too much rain. I've been looking through my photographs in search of a particular memory of summer.

It was taken in June, I believe, sometimes in the early 1990s. My father and I drove out one morning for a walk on Harting Down . I remember the feel of the warm breeze on my face, the springy turf, our hesitant conversation - sadly we didn't often talk one-to-one without my mother being present. The quality of the photo could be better - a bad workman blames his tools but it was taken with a very cheap, very basic, camera. Yet the combination of the energy flowing through the solitary kite flyer, his absorption and focus, the sweep of the downs and the distant memory of a summer's warmth still captivates me.

And the photograph was taken from the crest of a hill. Throughout this lifetime I've lived in the flatlands, on river plains and estuaries. I know that I need to climb a hill, any hill. Regularly.

I need - always - to be reminded of the long view.

Waiting

You might believe, wrongly, that the universe is out to get you when it's 6.45 am on Saturday morning, still nighttime really, and you have struggled downstairs with one of two huge piles of washing. You're making an early start to catch up on the week's accumulated chores. You load the washing machine, set the programme and press the On switch. Thirty seconds later the machine starts to grind and squeal. Red lights flash. The tub stops turning and your sheets and towels sit there, waterlogged and motionless.

The engineer is coming on Tuesday.

A therapeutic phone call to a friend at 9.00 am helped. So did a sunny morning after several grey days, a trip into town and new lingerie bought with a Christmas gift token.

....

The temporary job finishes next week. I've been more than glad to have it, but the goal of permanent part-time work is still elusive. The spectre of financial insecurity has started to make himself at home.

So I fall back on those other, smaller, ways of grounding myself which are suddenly no longer just a luxury. Making commitments. Lighting candles (£1 for 50 nightlights) around the home, taking care of the physical self and its surroundings, creating a structure when life isn't supplying one, eating properly (more or less), meditation. Especially meditation.

....

The only real answer though is to let go. To cry over the piles of dirty washing and the worry and the paralysing fear of doing the wrong thing. And then to listen.

I can wash some things by hand. A contact has requested a head massage. There's enough money in the bank for today, this week, this year. And I try to move forward in the understanding that real growth and real progress are sometimes more about considering the lilies - or snowdrops - than measuring miles covered or items ticked on a To Do list.

Waiting is an art form, someone I knew used to say. I think he was right.

Kiva

Kate at Integral Shamanics originally put me on to to Kiva where I went to renew my development aid loan this week. For all sorts of reasons, when you're anxious about money this kind of activity is good. My first loan went to a shopkeeper in Mexico to help her buy a photocopier. The second is to a charcoal seller in Tanzania.

I'm no economist but I'm particularly interested in the concept of microfinance. In another life, over twenty five years ago, I had some contact with work of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, then in its infancy. The bank's founder, Muhammad Yunus, played a major part in launching the concepts of microcredit and microfinance as forms of development aid.

Follow any of the links above for more information.

New Year's Day

Awake so early
in this unfamiliar bed
swimming in grey light.

My heart pumps its blood;
mist wraps the house in silence
and the Buddha smiles.