Lana Del Rey- Mariners Apartment Complex on repeat while painting
When decorating is Art, and each brush stroke means something. My Monument to Despair, or a visual representation of the DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) skill “Act Opposite.” Except that I didn’t have to make myself do anything: I had so much energy. Perhaps in another incarnation or on another day I could have collapsed or drank or gone to bed but today this Energy wouldn’t have let me.
Was it the over confidence and optimism of the Knight of Wands? Was it my shadow side saving me at last? I swam, more than I have for over a year, every day, full of energy. I listened to music. I drank coffee. I danced. And I painted this beautiful red wall. And it is Art because it expresses easily what cannot be easily explained. And I am happy with that.
First we looked in River Island, a soft bundle of pale grey scarf, hat and gloves, then, trying to do better, Market Row and an independent shop, looking through the window, a sign said ‘back in fifteen minutes’ but it was longer. In the cold, eating chips from the new market, then back again. Picking things out, she used to say she liked plain things but that was years ago. My eyes gravitating to bright pink gloves with faux fur, probably unsuitable. We chose a blanket scarf, pebble-cream and soft sky-blue, then John picks out a pair of fingerless mittens, a pretty knitted design with a small woodland animal and a fleecy furry lining; ‘They are soft and cosy and she could use them when she’s on her laptop,’ he said. Care, and such a lot of sadness.
John said, ‘It’s for my daughter, I haven’t seen her for two years.’ The woman in the shop took off the labels, struggling with her gel nails, and put them in beautiful gift box-bags. We went to the post office. ‘It’s busy,’ the woman said; that’s where she’d been, doing the online orders, an independent small business, doing everything on her own. But it wasn’t that bad. We put them in separate jiffy bags, addressing one each, our surname and address on the back, and “for Christmas.”
Mitski- Bug Like an Angel- the prequel soundtrack to that sad week, and a comfort during it
Postscript
Recovered now, absorbed, accepted, integrated. Plus I have a painted wall and a swimming habit.
I used to think they were talking about ‘Vince and Company,’ on Talk Sport, which still makes me laugh now.
You walked into that building and everyone took a breath, people swooned, of course, and everyone admired your mainland European cool of black effortlessly chic outfit, loose fitting black shirt, and your natural, casual walk. Of course you may have been covered in makeup, your clothes carefully picked out, the whole thing choreographed as if on a movie set. But I doubt it was totally like that, and everyone knows you are cool.
Our local team is Great Yarmouth Town, ‘The Bloaters’ we haven’t seen them yet but keep meaning to.
Payday morning. The fuel light and noise went on at the exact moment I pulled up at the petrol pump. A tank full of petrol, the month unblemished, save for the petrol and some biscuits for a work meeting. Will I resist urges to buy non essentials? Will I buy non essentials? Probably. Will I make no-buy food out of cupboards? Probably. On other days, will I, even with a fridge full of food, suggest going out for falafels, or Chinese tofu? Most definitely.
We talk about saving money by not shopping out of the local shop, but it is one of the joys of our day to day lives. At the entrance a basket of French baguettes, when they are hot you can smell them as soon as you walk in. Everyone around here buys these, and we see loads of people walking down the nearby streets with them. I always buy vegetable samosas, a can of diet coke, hummus, sometimes crisps and occasionally a jar of black olives.
I am grateful for my husband doing the shopping at Aldi, and for making soup. We have homemade soup in the freezer, but are saving that for ‘emergencies,’ the last one eaten alongside a day of crumpets and bagels, hungover after a party weekend, an accidental miracle of catering, pre planning and discipline.
I am grateful for the fantastic fruit and veg shop opposite the bus station, another thing I spend money on; tins with plastic lid and fork containing ready to eat stuffed aubergines and peppers, chickpeas or beans in a rich sauce, and microwaveable ready meals of bhindi masala, and all kinds of fruit. I buy avocados, and pine nuts, and we cook tofu with pak choy, oyster mushrooms, spring onions, rice and soy sauce.
Someone in Ipswich, a member of staff, said one day, ‘I hate the UK,’ but then clarified, no bombs, safe, and I added, ‘Free healthcare, water safe to drink out of the tap,’ and we both agreed, these things are not to be taken for granted. That said, I know what she means, the small mindedness sometimes, the hopelessness, the government. But we build our lives anywhere and I am sure you know that more than most.
Cold in the house, and out, a scarf wrapped around my head and neck, a duvet coat, underneath my two thermal vests, a long sleeved warm top, a cheap thin hoody, a warm fleecy, my indoor sweatpants that I later sleep in.
When I got back my husband said, ‘I did the most Yarko thing I’ve done yet, I went to the car with my dressing gown on… with my coat over it though.’
I did my usual walk, St Peters Street, King Street past the Red Herring Press, down Regent Road, past the Golden Wok, the wonderful new fresh cook Chinese food place, onto Marine Parade, and through onto the seafront.
There’s this sense of it stretching out, so much to discover and yet it’s such a small place really, walkable from side to side.
To my right, the Marina, huge and looming like the side of a ship. I pay for a monthly pass to go there, and this makes me so very happy Vincent, even if I don’t always go as often as I should.
I love the street lights there, multicoloured delicate strings of beaded lights, made into triangles, faint and delicate at dusk, bright and vivid at night. The lights ahead and behind. Las Vegas, arcades, to my right. To my left, the opposite: the dark sea, the dark golden sands, above, The Moon, two days away from full.
I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else, or that I could choose anywhere better. I love this place. I love it like love is a verb, I hope it loves me back, or at least, that it won’t hurt me.
I may not have your discipline, but I am on my day off, and hopefully again tomorrow Saturday, in amongst the football, of course, making art, for no reason whatsoever other than that I thought of it, decided on it, developed it into a project, and am doing it.
I got up, did some handwashing (washed some clothes by hand, my OCD is not the handwash kind!), put on a new charity shop top and jeans and went out. To the bank to pay in a cheque, a queue, it’s not uncommon for people to chat- a man spoke to me in there before. The man in front, turned around said, ‘Hello, how are you?’ Then he said, ‘Would you marry an Irishman?’ He looked me full in the face. I said I was already married, but if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have any prejudices. He said, ‘You’re so beautiful, how long have you been married?’ I started to explain, when suddenly he looked beyond me, out of the door, and bolted. It was just like that video of the two cats smooching and a third one comes up behind them and scares them, the caption says, ‘His wife came home early.’
So much money is needed just to live. When I notice that I spend a lot on just living, I remind myself that I am lucky. That I have the money to live, here.
Just being here is a pleasure.
This is the seventh and final of my series of reflective essays, written as letters to people, which I do plan to send, where possible, as well as to produce as a booklet, a handmade book, and hopefully an audiobook. Grounded in time and place, having returned to Norfolk and settled in Great Yarmouth, somewhere I only knew as a holiday day out, but which has long been mine and my husband’s spiritual home. Each letter corresponds to one of the seven chakras. This one is the Root Chakra, all about security and safety, and being in and looking after the physical body.
Chapter list below. All the letters are on the blog.
Dear Eminem
Letters from Great Yarmouth
Elizabeth Gilbert – Crown: spiritual connection
Elon Musk – Third Eye: vision and unification of the conscious and unconscious
Mike Tyson – Throat: speaking one’s truth, communication
The Women Executed as Witches in Great Yarmouth – Heart: love and connection between the physical and the spiritual
Paul De Beers – Solar Plexus: seat of the emotions, connection to and processing of
Eminem- Sacral: desires, energy
Vincent Kompany – Root: Security and safety, physical health and body, being grounded
My latest completed letter for my collection of letters called Dear Eminem, Letters from Great Yarmouth. Each of the seven letters corresponds to one of the seven Chakras. This one is for the solar plexus, the seat of emotions.
Not your real name, of course, you turned up in a Rolls Royce.
We need to work slowly, eat chocolate, take care of ourselves, to do this work.
What if it’s just like healing; processing people’s emotions. At work, we absorb our clients’ emotions, if we are aware enough, we know they are theirs not ours, we walk it off, cry it out, even. ‘I’m too complicated for you.’ ‘I’m too broken.’ In healing, the pain goes through and then out, earthing.
Rosen therapy workshop: I was paired with someone who was very depressed. The moment I touched the back of her neck she let go the whole weight of her head into my hands. ‘Listen for a word, about or from your partner,’ the tutor said. ‘Help’ came into my head.
Then it was my turn to receive. She held my shoulders, like a support, like a strengthening. Tears fell out of my eyes, not sad, but tender openness. ‘Listen for a word,’ the teacher said, then whisper it into your partner’s ear. ‘Tender’ my partner whispered into my ear, and more tears fell.
My only definite trauma is witnessing domestic violence as a baby at age one; years later when I started to draw recognisable pictures they were all of my mum screaming. I thought about Chernobyl– the baby absorbed the radiation and saved the mother. Did I absorb my mother’s emotions?
I would describe myself as friendly, rather than happy, although people tend to assume I’m happy. Alone, I can sometimes be anxious and depressed.
At work I usually veer between private versus it all spilling out. I don’t just mean how I have to know someone at work for months before I relax about swearing. Or that I miss sarcasm. Or that I’m not much of a laugh. I am a serious person. Except sometimes, when I’m not. With a trusted one, or under the right circumstances, with just the right people, in just the right atmosphere, I can be funny.
I mean, on the deep deep levels, sometimes I can feel someone coming towards me, and I freeze, a little. Two of my dear friends often give me a gift when I see them. I am astonished and overwhelmed by this, it is as if it is my birthday, but it isn’t.
And of course, that isn’t even the main thing. Sometimes I think about that time every day for ages. At one time I used it as an explanation for why I couldn’t say no, would sometimes freeze in bed, like a trapped animal playing dead, why I was so ‘promiscuous,’ or shall I now reframe that, as ‘into sex.’
Now that has cooled, post menopause, what am I left with?
Its brave enough just to not shave my armpits and go without makeup, hair anyhow and not dyed, brushed once a day, less at weekends. And just be me.
As an adult of course I now know exactly why you got into a child’s bed, and spent so much time with her.
As an adult I am absolutely scrupulous in terms of my respect for other’s boundaries. Someone I know will be sobbing uncontrollably, before I would so much as lightly touch their shoulder. And I have been almost distant with other people’s children, not hugging hello until well after it would have been expected.
I know what it is like to have my boundaries disrespected, and I respect others’, even if that means I may risk appearing distant.
My new personality, as it comes out, well I don’t always like it. Or rather, I am not always comfortable with it.
I used to bemoan feeling unknown at the same time as being careful not to let anyone know me.
But I do sometimes spill out, a swear word, a risqué joke, an honest statement of my feelings. When or if that had ever happened before I would have scuttled back and played that over in my head and then put on my plain outer self, giving nothing real away again, remaining alone with the alone…
But now, I don’t care quite as much; I am as surprised as anyone at this new person, and a little nervous as to what she may say. But this, this is the result of The Work. Of Witch Club. Of Tarot, of any kind of personal growth.
I work with traumatised people, diagnosed with PD ‘A sophisticated insult’ Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery.
It’s a terrible gaslighting, to use the modern phrase, that everyone thinks the abused becomes the abuser. No wonder I hesitate before touching anyone. And I was not probably actually abused, just something weird.
It is absolutely definitely a thing that happened that he got into my bed, saying he was cold. And that he showed me a ring with an altar, a figure either side and one behind, and said, ‘I could conjure Beelzebub, but you would be scared.’
It’s true, I’m not strong at visualising, but as soon as Molly (hypnotherapist) mentioned ‘meadow’ I saw yellow flowers, a meadow with grasses where I used to walk when we lived on the boat. Sometimes there would be a deer, sometimes it would freeze and stare before bounding away into the woods.
I think a lot about how I am the way I am and why. I feel different but I like being different. I don’t fit in but I don’t want to fit in.
The scared deer, my scared past self, inner self, but also always for me a sign of spirituality. By doing things like our Wild Witches meeting, I am honouring and not forgetting the wild, different, pagan, introverted individual. I am remembering her, and remembering her as positive.
Later I thought of myself in the meadow, shiny and pretty and playful like the Timotei advert, or wild and pagan, unbrushed hair everywhere no makeup; whatever way, the deer doesn’t mind what I look like, and comes and says hello.
“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.” Toni Morrison
And yet…
My Friday afternoons are sacred. I went out to the car, and continued on for a walk, following a little path near where the car was parked. Beyond the old gas works, the metal frame a beautiful circular silhouette. On the left a wide alleyway between the backs of two rows of houses. At the far end, the top of the bright sky blue rollercoaster was just visible. A kid on a scooter crossed the alley between me and the rollercoaster, then a woman walking a black dog, it was ahead of her; I thought it was a cat until I saw the lead.
An abandoned building, the windows out, grass on the roof; seagulls above, pigeons inside. The new bridge, a row of stove pipe chimneys, shiny silver on an old building, the last one standing, everything else cleared for the works.
Another abandoned building, windows intact but left open, a house for pigeons. Buddleia growing on and out of a wall. Round doorways and seafront houses that share a circle as a doorway arch, half each. Wrought iron gates with lobster claws…
Here I am, noticing everything, capturing everything, scribbling it all down in a new notebook, recycled paper with a gold fabric cover. I bought it for Tarot reading… oh well, a new notebook is never saved for one thing, it always ends up being for everything…
It was the same feeling I had in India, when I used to scribble everything down, the clothes, the colours of the buildings… It can be anywhere. Even in this industrial back street area, near the new multimillion pound bridge, delayed by voles. It makes me happy that we can be so kind, sometimes. Apparently in Japan if a tree is in the way of a new road, they bind the tree’s roots and carefully move it.
What would you like, here, I wonder? A heritage walk around The Rows, tiny alleyways where everyone used to live, full of history and olde worlde charm.
The V-Namese where we ate on our weekends, big bowls of Udon noodle soup in some kind of magic broth that always made me feel better when I was run down. We moved in slowly, every other weekend in the gap between the buying of the house and changing jobs.
We used to stay at the St George Hotel, parking opposite Wellington Pier, with its ever changing coloured lights. One day we arrived just as it was getting dark. Later we ordered Indian food, and as there was only one teaspoon in the room, I went downstairs and out to the car to get a spoon, always there somewhere amongst ketchup sachets and the like. The lights at their brightest now, in the dark; earlier the lights had been pastel faint in the dusk. I stood there thinking, No one else is looking at this right now, the way I am. Loving it. Wanting to write about it.
Falafels at Great Yarmouth Shawarma; a brightly lit, functional café with a sociable vibe, in the evening especially, the closest we get to the magic of an Indian chai stall. Oh my heart!
Tropical Café and Mom’s Café on King Street, Portuguese pastries, good strong coffee and friendly atmosphere. You might also enjoy visiting Mermaid’s Quay just over the road for a cute hand knitted toy.
We have been painting the house, but slowly, deliberately, yes from laziness, yes from pacing oneself. Yes from doing other things. But slowly making like Jung’s Tower, a spiritual place of our own. However, always, always with an open hand. I have my own big room with a great table altar, another table for Tarot cards, and a huge desk to work at. We have our shared bedroom and my husband has a room too. Space!
That said, I was astonishingly productive on the boat: I wrote my Travel-Spiritual Memoir. I collated a collection of blogs, ‘What my angel sees’. I republished my original spiritual memoir. I wrote, I edited, I reviewed and I gathered. I made covers, I had covers made. I uploaded to Amazon, noticed mistakes, reuploaded again. And again. I learned how to do Smashwords and did that too, a long and laborious process, hours hunched over a Surface Go in the curtained off bedroom area. All that while working full time.
We don’t have to have a room of our own, to write- but it is nice!
We can orientate ourselves, and others, by the Wheel, visible almost wherever we are. A physical, visual representation and reminder. Looming large, white and glowing at dusk; white against blue sky, reflecting the sun on a bright day. It is an observation pod wheel. But it is also just The Wheel. The Buddhist Wheel of Life. The Pagan Wheel of the Year. The Wheel of Fortune from the Tarot.
Where would you live? Northgate, maybe, looking out over the sea, the dunes, the open space like the clean pages of a new notebook. With a boat nearby, perhaps?
I know you didn’t want to be the lady in the big perfect house up on the hill, nor do I want to get so comfortable that I couldn’t leave.
Eat Pray Love, my own personal bible for so many years. Only last week I said to someone, ‘You take one step towards Grace, and Grace will take a thousand steps towards you.’
It was the beginning of everything, spotted on a bookshop’s display shelf in February 2009. I reserved it from the library, and waited. In that July I met my now husband. I wrote my own spiritual memoir, How to find Heaven on Earth, Love, spirituality and everyday life. ‘Like Eat Pray Love but without the travel,’ I joked. And then in 2018-2019 we went travelling, and I wrote my very own personal, travel and spiritual memoir of a year in India and South East Asia, I fell in love with you and I cried.
I read that when you were six years old people thought you were mad. You loved Sci Fi. You thought, ‘What am I going to do with my life, for it to have meaning?’ ‘I am going to try and get to Mars.’ To have the self belief and determination to follow such an outlandish path having come from such a difficult base!
For me it’s not about you and what you are doing, it’s about how can we do that within our own lives. How many of us have stayed true to the person we were when we were six? Confidence and inspiration, and staying true to who you really are. That is the lesson you give me. The Third Eye Chakra is all about vision, and who best to look to for vision than you? Not just vision, but integration of the conscious and unconscious, the past and the present.
Is it a quest, that we drop down into this world, everything set up for conformity right from the first days at school; peers, teachers. Creative thinking not encouraged, no real philosophical tuition. Teased, put down, alienated. But if you can rise above that, dare to be different, survive and then decide to do something totally mind-blowing and say it with absolute confidence and work all day and all night to make it happen… Well then maybe the reward for that is to see it.
I want to go to Mars.
Jack White said recently that you can stay in that place where you limit yourself to a narrow lane and write off anything outside that, or you can open your mind and expand your horizons and discover a whole new world – the production on Ah Ha’s Take on me, one of the most uncool songs of the era if you were at all ‘alternative,’ was incredible, he said.
I was glad to hear that you do, or have done, Special K. I spoke about you once, me paralysed, kneeling on the floor, hands pressing on the pouffe, able to make only very occasional eye contact with supreme effort. Thinking about how we’re all the same: as long as you have somewhere to live and somewhere to sit, however much the sofa or house cost is irrelevant.
You come up for me in thoughts of visionary, unusual people and also in thoughts about having great wealth; although I understand that for you wealth is a means to an end, space exploration being incredibly expensive, and also that it facilitates you being able to do so much. Easier and faster to move around and get things done, with money, than not.
I had the idea of writing a series of letters. My friend pointed out a writing place with a poster about a letter writing course. I thought about making books, my sister in law found a book making course and someone on the letters course had studied book making and showed her books, one was made with envelopes, for letters.
I remembered that I used to make handmade paper, and how I can start collecting now and include everything from my day to day life… At the same time I took heart from the artist who pulped unwanted copies of the Da Vinci Code and remade them into 1984 by George Orwell- it’s okay to just have an idea and follow it through, just because you want to.
Sometimes it can be fun to say ‘Yes to everything’ but right now, I am being very discerning and directive of my focus.
I went for a Tarot reading to experience having a paid for reading. She commented on how many different things I have on the go and told me not to start anything I am not going to follow through. She recommended another book (I already had two) and even though she actually said that after a while you don’t really need books, I bought it. She does quick seaside readings, as that is what that client group want, although she is capable of doing deeper ones. She said I had good energy, and could come and work for her next summer.
I have done my own readings on me, and sometimes the meaning can take a couple of days to emerge. Later I did one for a friend who had sent me her questions in advance. I thought about her questions in the days before, and spent time looking up meanings and reflecting. This is deep, slow work. So anyway I have decided- no more Tarot books, and no going back to the seaside woman for another reading and possibly getting encouraged to work for her doing ten minute readings- tempting though that is, I need to follow my own path.
The letter writing course, in a terribly middle class country setting, triggered old feelings of inadequacy and alienation but I still went. The woman who ran it seemed to like me, and she told us of her heartfelt wish, to work with seals. She even has a huge collection of cuddly seals, collected over the years. Whilst writing a biography for a well-known ex politician, she had even rung up about a seal job, sadly having to answer ‘no’ to all the questions; Have you got a degree in marine biology, have you worked with seals before? She recently moved here, and not far away is the North Norfolk coast with plenty of seals, and seal rescue people looking for volunteers. Afterwards I wrote her a little note: ‘I do hope you prioritise doing something with seals. The heart wants what the heart wants, and you obviously love them.’
Some of us know what we want, but don’t listen. Some of us have butterfly interests; multiple projects at once, or going through phases. Now I make hats, now I write. Some of us know what we want with absolute singular purpose and all our focus goes on that. Not many of us, but you do.
I’m sitting at my desk. The baby seagulls have arrived! This is my first time seeing baby seagulls, like baby pigeons, something that people here in the UK say they never see. Grey and fluffy, wandering around in and out of gardens, along the pavements. I watched them, delighted, striking up conversations with other people looking at them.
One landed in the front garden and disappeared down the side of a metal storage box, hiding away until it moved to sit by the front door, then eventually went out of the gate. I now know that the thing to do is gently encourage them out of the gate or at least in view so that the parents can find them. The parents find them, supervise them and even shoo them out of the road when cars come.
At the end of our road, by the butterfly mural, people put out piles of corn every day for crowds of pigeons, and plastic trays of water on top of the bins. I put out water now as well, and an adult seagull comes regularly for a drink, perching on the bin and annoying the cat.
Are you the kind of person who will notice a bird perched on a roof, or like I did the other day, a sparrow perched on the top of a direction sign? I was never interested in things like that, before.
My husband has a lot of your music on his iPod. Back in the day, we would shut ourselves away for the weekend and take a lot of MDMA: one night of MDMA and several days of recovery. We, or especially, I, would get stuck on things, and we would often get stuck on you, or Hailie, ‘What happened to Hailie, is she okay? Did Eminem ever get back together with his wife?
I was so shocked a few years ago when I saw a poster of you with silver hair, and realised you were fifty years old! Why though, when we all know that if we are lucky, we are going to grow old. I suppose it is that for me you are young; in the 90s, me and my other single mum friends wondering when or if we should allow our kids to have your album, plastered with warning lyrics which only made everyone want it more…
I disliked that ‘Air’ or ‘thinky’ part of motherhood.
I mean I’m still not there with really tuning into the waters of my own intuition, being self confident that I know what to do, and am strong enough to do it, or that the universe has got me, all I need to do is relax, that I do not need to plan and make everything happen, the world turns on its own and I can just relax and wait for things to happen. I mean I don’t even know if I agree with that.
But perhaps it is sometimes true. Like Hayley- my friend, who I saw last night, synchronicity!- we did Tarot readings and afterwards she sent me intuitions– work, new moves, a name. Will that person make something happen, will I, but just from my intuition, not from my own will and action from ‘Air’ and thinking?
Whereas, this letters project will definitely only get done if I do it. Are you into Tarot and such like? I suppose, over the years, that you have been into EVERYTHING. Of course I have no idea.
I remember one night, I mean, I was there in all the Slim Shady frenzy, the should we let our kids listen, I don’t know, should we let them play GTA, I don’t know, all that hysteria of video nasties and child murderers and the song Stan. You being blamed for people doing things you’d written about in your songs. And then one night, totally high, a moment of total empathy, understanding and clarity, just for a moment: ‘I didn’t know I was going to get that big.’ Of course you didn’t.
I only ever took drugs really in my thirties, with my husband, at home. DIY MDMA PTSD therapy. Exploring the edges of my consciousness on mushrooms. Apparently not many people do the same as us, just at home, talking. Listening to a old Ipod with an enormous memory, on shuffle. Wondering what Eminem’s daughter’s doing now. Of course I am sure people do, but when I mentioned it recently to a couple of friends, they looked at me blankly.
A moment of understanding, several years ago now, at a festival, young people talking about drugs, one saying re MDMA, ‘I usually have an urge to go around the festival looking for someone to help.’ ‘That’s like me!’ I said, ‘I get urges to give all our money to a donkey sanctuary! ‘Same!’ Lovely Sam said and laughed. John my husband laughing, ‘I have to hide all the bank cards!’
In a neat synchronicity, yesterday I was at work, hot desking from a meeting room while some workmen worked outside, when I looked out of the window- we were on floor two- and saw, inside a tree’s branches, a group of wriggling fidgeting fluffballs, like a basket of kittens, but actually baby pigeons, being fed by their parent. First time seeing baby pigeons! The person I was with didn’t really remark much on it and I didn’t want to intrude or disturb the pigeon family so I watched them being fed a worm and then went back to work. When I looked later they were all curled up together, still now and asleep.
Hayley asked me last night, ‘So are there any really posh bits, any million pound houses, in Great Yarmouth? I didn’t know, so I looked it up on Rightmove. There aren’t many, and they are in Burgh Castle, just outside Great Yarmouth. Or you could buy a hotel in the middle of town.
You are my Fire Element role model. You did your thing, you found your Fire.
This blue plaque is at the entrance to the Old and New Cemeteries of Great Yarmouth. The Cemeteries are in the Northgate area; stretching behind Great Yarmouth Minster, near Northgate High Street and Wrights Art Shop in Stanley Road.
I had taken an afternoon off, time owed from work. I always try to do something with that time, to appreciate it.
I walked from my house to Wrights Art Shop, with a picture to be framed, I rang first: I had limited time before they closed. I put the picture in a bag, the top poking out a little; black clouds were coming, would I get there before it started raining?
I did. The picture, ‘Zen cutting through the chaos,’ an enso, the artist found on Instagram, every piece with such meaning and amazing titles. A recent piece, about finding your true self, is called ‘We are not the same… And that’s okay.’
I walked through the cemetery, full of squirrels. I regretted not having nuts and decided to buy some for the way home. I dropped the picture off at Wrights a wonderful independent art shop which also sells eco refills and products, and now, vintage ornaments, and then headed to the petrol station for nuts. It was closed, and I chided myself for being so unimaginative and was grateful that now I had to do better. I was glad to see a big Portuguese supermarket shop, with a small café area, selling coffee and the most amazing looking brightly coloured cakes. I bought an unfamiliar soft drink and some plain nuts.
Feeding the squirrels, finding the Portuguese shop, such a joy, that day, and more future joy stored up, that I could go back there for coffee and cake, take my husband to show him. I am so grateful for this life I have, for a life I can appreciate, and for being able to appreciate it.
On my altar, Art, for Mabon. Painting on left- ‘We are not the same, and that’s okay,’ by John Barnard.
I had started Wild Women by then, we started at Beltane (early May), and this reflective walk was just after the Summer Solstice.
I thought about you a lot that day.
On the way back I saw the Witch plaque again. What would they be like, if they were here now, these witches? Would they, as I do, seek and tune into, connect with and absorb, nature at any opportunity? Although it’s so built, the world now, here in GY we have the cemeteries, the sea. So I can always get there.
Or were some just women, maybe just women who were single, or who had a cat. They may well not have identified as or want to or certainly not want to now having been executed, identify as witches now if they came back. Like all witches and all women everywhere, there’s a million different answers for who they’d be or what they’d do. But I felt a closeness, to them, to my own true nature. I looked at the trees, the bushes, the old gravestones. I enjoyed the place.
I walked back by the sea and sat down at the end of the little concrete jetty near the recycling ship of plastic bottles and looked out. The sea blue with a stripe of dark blue at the horizon, the air that perfect temperature and combination, bare arms, a strong enough breeze to feel but not be cold. This, yes, this is me, recharging, and me being me.
A development is starting, near a big piece of land with many big old trees. I daydreamed about spells to protect them and thought that people would probably be more scared of someone tying ribbons around trees thinking it was a witch’s spell than they would about trees being cut down, grass paved over, and a world of concrete and no oxygen… ‘Contrary to popular belief, not everyone has an affinity with nature or needs a connection with the natural world,’ was something I read recently.
In my little group, meeting online, from Norfolk, London and Tokyo. We meditate together, explore signs and synchronicities, ask for healing, honour our connection with the natural world, and support each other. ‘Autumn has finally arrived in Tokyo and I have never been happier about a new season!’ B wrote joyfully from Japan. I feel the same, here in GY.
It’s still described as a mass hysteria of peasants, a panic about black magic, with the women often described as ordinary women, who had dementia, or knew about herbs. Yes, terrible to be an ordinary woman and be accused of witchcraft; also terrible that someone who was practising witchcraft was killed; paganism and wicca are religions, that people were persecuted for practising. Not all, and we won’t ever know, but instead of saying they aren’t witches, or implying that such a thing is completely made up, could we also add in, that it was a concerted campaign against women, women healers, women who were medicine women, women who were single, women who chose not to conform to norms, a systematic plan by church and state to kill women and their knowledge.
Consider even now how spinster is still used- actual meaning- a woman who spun thread and yarn with a spinning wheel, earning her own money and not needing to marry for financial support- and crazy cat lady used as a slur against the suffragettes (and still now!); from the witch hunts, women who were killed for owning a cat, so many cats killed, possibly contributing to spread of rats and the plague; the descriptions of witches in children’s story books: moles, hairs on face- that’s just being old! Old woman, old women, old wives tales, all terms of dismissal or insult. Demeaning women, particularly older women, their power and knowledge.
Estimates range from 30,000-100,00 killed during the Witch hunt period, to up to 9 million killed when counted over eleven centuries; mainly women and girls but also men.
“Mike Tyson Gets Emotional During Cris Cyborg Interview | Mike Tyson” on YouTube
I was very late to the party, only becoming an admirer of yours in the last few years; via Joe Rogan, and your own podcast, Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson. Particularly a clip from Hot boxin’, I don’t even know who the other person is, where you say, ‘I’m just really happy to be here now, with you, I love you man.’ ‘I love you too.’
I mentioned this at work a couple of weeks ago, in my drop in session at the approved premises (for people recently released from prison) where I do a mindfulness session. The session before, one of the men had said, ‘It’s not very manly.’ This time a couple of the same men came again, and a member of staff also joined in. We had a bit of a vibe going. Someone outside the window was upset; still everyone stayed with it. Afterwards the man from last time said, ‘That was better this time.’ He’d been to the gym earlier and was tired, and found it easier to relax. ‘Last time I thought it wasn’t very manly.’ Another man said, ‘I used to think it was shit when people went on about mindfulness, then I tried it.’
I said, ‘I thought about what you said last time, and I thought, Mike Tyson, he meditates. He’s manly.’ Everyone nodded in agreement. Someone mentioned you being into marijuana. Someone else mentioned seeing you on Joe Rogan. I told them about my favourite clip. ‘I’m just really happy to be here now, with you, I love you man.’
My friend speaking about grief after her husband had died. She said what it had taught her was to just really enjoy the present moment. We were at my son’s art exhibition, we were standing next to a table with glasses of white wine and little cubes of cheese. She picked up a piece of cheese with a cocktail stick and said, ‘And now I’m going to really enjoy this piece of cheese.’
With the men at the drop in, talking about your podcast and being in the moment, I said the aim is to be in the moment but you can’t be there all the time or we wouldn’t ever go shopping to get food to make dinner. I meant it but we were laughing as well. Thinking about that now though, am I wrong about that? I know Buddhists believe in a complete and permanent type of enlightenment. I said at the Buddhist Centre, I don’t know if you can be enlightened all the time, like walking around the supermarket, it’s more something that comes in moments. Later, reading about the Tarot, the bolt of lightning of enlightenment is just one step on the road, it’s not the end.
So my husband, who showed me the podcast clips and reintroduced me to you, has devoted much of his adult life to the search for self realisation. Unpicking conditioning, using psychedelics, having glimpses of enlightenment, reading history and philosophy books, educating himself by himself, reflecting upon and taking responsibility for his whole life. He has a very intact personality, I said from the start that he would be the same if he was homeless or if he were a millionaire. I think you’d get along, if you were to have an evening together to smoke and talk about Life, the Universe and Everything.
YouTube Mike Tyson Ring Entrance- Mike Spinks
My husband said about you, ‘For me, I just really loved him as a fighter, he looked so cool, he’d come out all in black, black shorts, black trainers, no socks, nothing else, no top, no robe, nothing wrapped around him. No ring walk music, just noise, the clanging of chains… Look now on YouTube, the size of the crowds…
He was a scholar of boxing, he studied all the greats, and at age 20, was the youngest heavyweight champion in history. Then jail, he indented the concrete of his cell keeping fit while in there. And all that money, he spent it, on big cats, cars… I mean any one of those things, coming from the Projects and becoming world famous, or being a world champion, or even just getting into a boxing ring, any one of those are incredible peak experiences that most of us never experience. He’s been through the most extreme of experiences of highs and also of lows. And then, lately, the mushrooms, LSD, DMT, weed. A ranch, growing weed, a podcast. And now, at this stage of our lives, after all that, we share some experiences: the drugs, the self realisation journey experience, the acceptance of where we are right now.’
You are a person we can believe in. You are deeply into meditation and still get angry, as we all do. We can’t hold ourselves to impossible Buddha standards; we try and try but we won’t be perfect because we can’t be but it’s the trying that is the thing, every day, in this world.
Here in Great Yarmouth I’ve let the weeds grow, deliberately, and planted sunflowers and other flowers for the bees and butterflies and made hiding places and shelter for bugs in the small front and back yards. I made a little pond from a plastic planter, stones from the beach and pond weed, the water is clear and snails and tiny creatures are living in it.
There are butterflies everywhere, on the buddleia bush in the back yard, on the pattern of our net curtains and those of so many others, on my neighbour’s stained glass style outside light, plastic butterflies on another neighbours’ wall, a big butterfly mural at the end of our road, and on the silver wind chime of a once grand seafront hotel. The sea is a six minute walk from the house, past another old hotel, the vaulted moulded ceiling painted pink and dark red; a long, wide stretch of soft golden sands, the sea a different shade of blue each day. I love the sea. I hope you do too.
As I write this we are on day 30 of Duolingo. At the Portuguese café I said Obrigada so well a man spun around surprised and asked me if I was in fact Portuguese. The reality is I can only say badly pronounced sentences such as ‘the woman eats an apple.’ ‘You need to get close, get a Portuguese boyfriend,’ he said.
We like to keep a low profile; this was shattered when our car alarm went off nine times in the middle of the night; we slept through it and the neighbour over the road banging on the door…
I got temporarily traumatised by some training on my induction training. Not by the huge volume of eLearning I had to work through, a problem that will be familiar to anyone working in health and social care. No, by the Safeguarding Adults training. Tip- if you are of a sensitive disposition, and the trainer says, this video comes with an extreme trigger warning, I cannot stress this enough, and gives you an option of not watching it, then don’t watch it. Anyway.
I used to follow the Buddhist teaching of ‘guarding the gates of your senses.’ I remained resentful, furious even, if people told me things I didn’t want to hear, because in some cases it took me years, over a decade, to forget.
My first thought was, I’m going to be stuck with this now, possibly for the rest of my life. I didn’t want to be alone, I wanted to cuddle all the time, I was extremely sensitive to the slightest raised voice or joke seriousness. I didn’t want to be in the bedroom alone. I didn’t even want to be outside the front door having a cigarette alone. I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts. I went over and over it, in the complete detail. I tried to push it away, it kept coming. In the end I allowed it to come without pushing it away.
I searched for the lesson in it, (beyond, heed trigger warnings- which I did on the next batch of training, protecting myself this time) and concluded that it was my horizons being forcibly expanded. I’ve chosen a job in this field, and that means I’m going to come face to face with things that most people do not want to think about. Maybe it is time to Open the Gates. Perhaps to become stronger and manage more than I realised. Perhaps like Ganesh in Pushkar, who told us he watched the news in India, so that, ‘I know there is everything.’
Shortly after this, I had a Conversation With My Son About The Past. This was set up by my husband on the request of my son, after having done preliminary conversations with us both. I had previously thought I would go to my grave having never had this conversation but on the day I actually initiated it. I felt dizzy only for a moment, then it was tolerable. I moved, and leant on the doorframe. It was like stepping through a portal, or breaking the fourth wall. A few days after that, he called my husband and said he was making two important actions to look after his health. Is that a coincidence? There’s no such thing as coincidences.
The back bedroom, the warmest, sunniest, sweetest room in the house
Of course it can’t stay like that… Because we have stuff, and because of who we are. We wear the house lightly. This messy minimalism, helps me not to take it all too seriously.
Understanding shadow work, at last, as it pertains to me, not as an abstract theory or Instagram saying. I realised that pushing away that aspect of me also pushes away the creative individual. I hold onto some ideal which I’m not, and deny the sparky original aspects of myself into the bargain. I never understood this properly before. By accepting the so called bad you accept the so called good. Instead of blocking, and continually hoping for something else, some impossible wish; instead accepting what is, and then what is comes rushing in, and it isn’t, after all, that bad. I’m constantly tensed against so much, literally twisting and turning away, from what, what is so bad?
Shadow work, all work, is a continual process of waking up, realising, forgetting, learning; like peeling an onion until all that’s left is you, sitting in an empty room, alone.
Thank you very much for reading
12 RULES FOR BEING HUMAN HANDED DOWN FROM ANCIENT SANSKRIT
I need to delete the app from the swimming pool in Northamptonshire, cold and run down, every other locker broken, where I still went at eight or nine at night even in the winter.
Before that, the pool in Hertfordshire where I often only went to shower.
Before that no swimming, travelling, before that the UEA or Riverside in Norwich. Before that St Augustine’s with its three terrifying diving boards. Before that, secondary school indoors, before that primary school outdoors.
My first really good swim here, at the beautiful, brand new Marina, an eight minute walk from my house. I have a brand new beautiful swimming pool an eight minute walk from my house! Arriving in the deep end, resting my feet on a convenient shelf, I look up and see the arcades, and what looks like a Sea Goddess, facing out to sea, strong and powerful. Coming out, I feel gravity come back into my body. You can walk through the café and out the back doors which open right out onto the beach.
This is my sixth job in five years; up until we went travelling I did the same job for seven years but since we got back to the boat mooring I’ve done a few months in one role, then a year in a different role at the same place, then a year in Hertfordshire, taking the boat with us for a continuous cruising adventure; then back at the boat mooring a different job for six months until moving to the house; which is in a different town but in the same county (Norfolk) as where we were before going travelling.
On our return, we have been very disappointed with Norfolk racism. ‘I’m not a racist but…’ John’s new work colleagues (he called them out and since then he changed jobs.)
‘Oh, I met the neighbour.’ John said
‘Oh good,’ I say.
‘He’s a racist.’ John says.
‘FFS!’
So now I test people out straightaway, my new friend, let’s establish this before we go any further. ‘I love it that it’s so diverse here,’ I say, ‘I love the Portuguese cafes.’
As well as enjoying the cafes, having visitors to the house has been very nice.
Our dear friend DW came with a huge desk, an Ikea bookcase, coffee tables; calmly putting it all together for us. So kind. Another trip, more gifts, shiny, quality cutlery gleaming in the kitchen drawer. Arranging plain and neutral plates and bowls in the cupboards, opening the doors to admire them.
Working from home, online training, we had a forty-five minute lunch break so I walked down to the sea. A six minute walk from my front door to my feet on the sand! I’d already planned to paddle. I carried my trainers this time, having had my previous pair stolen while paddling before we moved in. The water was very cold. The sun was shining. Several families were at the water’s edge. The wheelgleamed.
The pods are back on- the Season and Summer are near!
Video of starlings on my Instagram
Sometimes if it’s late, John meets me at the pool. ‘We’re walking a different way home, I found this place where the trees are full of birds,’ he said one evening. ‘Don’t walk here by yourself when it’s late.’ He said he had walked behind a man yelling at another man. ‘If I see you again I’ll cut your fucking head off! Oh, sorry Sir,’ he said hastily when he saw John.
Usually the starlings are at the top of our road, then later, above the trees where they sleep. I followed them, the sound of their wings beating overhead. Later I saw poop on my coat, but I didn’t care.
We followed them to the trees, then crossed over the road, avoiding the poop this time, and watched them swoop over the trees, then land in waves, around a third of them landing, and again, and again, like a table cloth being folded, and that was that, hundreds of them, tucked up for the night.
One evening I drove straight to the pool after work and parked at the Marina car park. It was dusk. Ahead of me the sea and sky a vibrant blue against the golden sands and green netting. Wellington Pier glowed its magical hues. Like the place in Vietnam.Like love. Enjoying the interstitial time and oatcakes and a banana, in the rear view mirror the sunset and the starlingmurmuration.
In a session with my clinical supervisor at work: ‘I feel you are in exactly the right place,’ she said. I’m still learning, growing, reflecting.
What I’ve been listening to/watching
Reginald Perrin (triggering fleeting moments of existential crisis when we first moved in: should we have come back, to a house, to Norfolk? Will we, do we need to, run away again?
Rachel 