In Praise of Magnolia and In Praise of PMS

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Art, Kazimir Malevich, Martin Creed, Menstruation, Periods, PMS, prayer, Work

In Praise of Magnolia and
In Praise of PMS
In Praise of Magnolia

When I was in my twenties I painted my bedroom shocking pink. I spray painted Hey where the fuck were you when my lights went out?* and Under neon loneliness motorcycle emptiness** below a string of multicoloured fairy lights.

Twenty years later my husband and I have spent hours poring over paint charts trying to choose something pale and neutral. So what happened, have I become boring? Driving to work I flicked from a CD to Radio 4 and came across Martin Creed (Turner Prize winner in 2001 for an empty room in which the lights went on and off at 5 second intervals) being interviewed about Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (a square of black oil paint on a white canvas)
and whether or not it is art. I am sure I have been guilty of saying dismissive things about conceptual art and certainly I have often been at a loss as to what to say at friends’ art exhibitions. But with Martin, I’m going to call him Martin from now on, a light went on (a terrible pun, I know). He refused to get into making judgements about whether or not things were art; he said it only matters if you like it or not.
He explained that the purpose of things like black squares or white squares or lights that just go on and off is that there’s nothing but your own thoughts and reactions. In this busy world it’s nice to just sit and stare at a plain canvas and see what comes into your head.
Yes! That’s it! In my twenties I needed all my stimulation outside of me. I repainted my room every year or so. I wore homemade gold dresses and leopard faux fur hats. But at forty-four, the inside of my head has a whole lot more stuff in it, and more importantly, I know my way around in there now. I long for simple clothes, because I am interesting enough.
So rather than thinking that to paint everything magnolia smacks of a lack of imagination, perhaps the opposite is true!
As with most things, there is a middle ground, and in this case the middle ground is called Hay or number 37 by Farrow and Ball. ***

In Praise of PMS

Maintaining my equilibrium was hard this week.**** My emotions skittered all over the place, my confidence wobbled, I felt anxious and panicky. But is there anything good about PMS? However challenging I find it, I do think there is something valuable there. The veil between my emotions and the world is so thin. It’s so hard to fake my feelings. And even though I do not enjoy the few days each month of feeling a sudden loss of confidence and capability, I can’t help but wonder, if I were to scratch the surface a bit more would I find that the emotional state it unleashes could actually be useful? It might need a couple of days off work though, so that instead of normal activities I could explore doing whatever it is that would be best done on those days.

On Wikipedia it gives a biological explanation, saying that the woman at this time finds her man so annoying that she breaks up with him, thereby freeing her to find someone who will get her pregnant. It also quotes a man in 1873 saying that women should stay at home due to their uncontrollable behaviours when they have PMS. A different man said that women were at the height of their powers at this time and so should be freed from mundane concerns and distractions. A woman researcher said that women need time alone when they have PMS but rarely get it. And it said that some countries give women menstrual leave. (I always admired a woman at my last job who was so open with her (male) boss about asking for a day off during her period, saying, I could come to work but I’d have to sit on a black plastic bin bag and I think the patients might think it was weird. Enough information, he said, but gave her the day off).

I think I could take something from all the Wikipedia theories and opinions. So, PMS shines a light on everything that irritates, from the trivial to the important. It shows us what is not in harmony with our temperament and needs, what is bad for our soul. Of course some things will be minor that on reflection we decide to live with. Sometimes it might show us what we need to change: I suddenly fell out of love with work, suddenly couldn’t stand the late hours and the drive and the lack of support. I calmly decided to look for another job. And sometimes, all we need is some time alone, if only to eat a family size bar of Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut and watch romantic comedies, and contemplate how wonderful we are.

*Hole
**Manic Street Preachers
***I know, but I probably won’t do it again for another ten years
****But I still prayed five times every day. I still felt creative, connected and insightful. I still got stuff done (my proudest achievement- I took off, washed, dried and put back on the sofa and sofa cushion covers, a feat akin to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro).

In Love with Life

Tags

healing, Law of Attraction, love, marriage, prayer, religion, spirituality, The Secret, writing

In Love with Life

This week I have bought and drunk two kale and spinach smoothies. This would have been unheard of before now. I have always been very reluctant to even try vegetable juice, been vehemently anti food fads and super foods and so on and until recently I was fairly lax about eating properly. But I do not necessarily know what’s best. I used to be similarly dismissive of spirituality and religion, maintaining there was nothing whatsoever spiritual about me and that I didn’t believe in anything! I wonder now whether I should track back all the things I was sneery about as an angry young woman and cynical about as a grown up woman, and embrace them: starting with vegetable juice and moving onto, let’s see, success, money, forward planning, and miracles.

I went through a phase of being into the Law of Attraction and practicing The Secret but I could never get that excited about finding a parking space in a busy car park (partly because I would hate to have to reverse park into the one remaining space with a queue of cars behind me, parking not being my strong point), or visualising cheques in the mail. But I did and do believe in maintaining a level of serenity, openness and optimism which does inevitably make the day (and life) go better.

I’ve moved up a level now though. Recently I have been praying five times a day: in the morning before I go to work, at lunchtime, at the end of the working day before I go home, in the evening at home, and before bed. I kneel on the floor and say thank you and feel connected with God, and send distant healing to anyone on my list for the week. That’s it. And, oh my, what an effect it is having!

Everywhere, people seem so happy and friendly. At the swimming pool, I heard three lots of children having a really fun time with their parents, lots of laughter and no stress. In the supermarket a dad was having a laugh with his adolescent daughter, threatening to embarrass her by dancing, they were both laughing and caught my eye. The lights blew on my car and a man at a garage helped me for ages for free. My friend who has been very depressed suddenly shifted and sounded so full of change and light. I visited the university where I trained; I was glad to be able to tell my old tutor what I was doing and so touched when she said that every time she drives past the hospital where I got my first job, she thinks of me.

I had the bravery and the motivation to go up in the loft and get rid of stuff and tidy the house, I also had fun seeing friends, I did healing and writing, all effortlessly, seamlessly, as if this week was a microcosm of a perfect life. Shopping in the city and then going to a family barbecue, with none of my normal anxieties about time, getting everything done, getting ready, what to wear, what to say. It was all so easy, just sitting on the grass, chatting away, entertaining the kids so totally unselfconsciously then sitting with the adults later, no shyness, no blank spaces, no tiredness, just total ease… Home at 10pm, a quick tidy round and wash up without even thinking about it and certainly without any stress about getting things done.

Me and my husband both independently deciding that one evening was the evening to reconnect with each other, to ‘party’ (by which I mean a bottle of beer, a cigarette and an episode of something funny), but still, we were so happy with each other, taking a step out of the routine of the week which usually just revolves around cooking and eating and going to bed early enough to get through the next day. Thinking that evening how lovely everything is, how all this extra stuff keeps happening, all these things that I hadn’t even known I wanted but that have just been so nice, and that all this has happened since I started praying. I had this sense that it’s like my life will improve in ways I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine, but God can… Immediately after I had this thought, my husband looked at his rota and said, ‘I don’t have to get up at 5am, I have to get up at 6am!’ I said, ‘so just when you thought life couldn’t get any better!’ Him, laughing, putting on a cool American accent, ‘yep, it just keeps on getting better!’

The drawback with The Secret is that we are limited by our own imagination, you have to visualise it all yourself. This way (the prayer way) opens up possibilities I can’t even imagine.

‘I long for the days when everything I owned fitted into a Fiat Uno’*

‘I long for the days when everything I owned fitted into a Fiat Uno’*

It is no way news that de cluttering is therapeutic. Last week I did my clothes and shoes, even quite happily throwing away the (too high) gold sandals I got married in only last year. Today I tackled the really hard stuff: the art and craft stuff under the stairs. The wire mesh I made handmade paper with fifteen years ago and that I kind of always thought I might do again with my step daughter but haven’t. The little cardboard pot of sequins I used to make cards with. Coloured pencils I have had for years, little paintbrushes. This stuff is hard because on the one hand it seems to reproach me for having abandoned that side of things- I no longer make cards or sew- but it also forces me to realise that I am not the same person I was. That can be viewed sadly or perhaps it can be viewed happily: wow, what an amazing creative person I used to be, even when I had no money and a little child and was a single parent and was probably a bit depressed, how cool was I? I remind myself that that cool young woman helped lay the foundations for me to grow into the calm**, centred, super happy person that I am today.
This week I had an experience that I couldn’t describe in words (a challenge for a writer): a sports massage. As she twanged the big tendons of my neck my mind skated over how to describe the feeling this induced: it was not at all a sexual feeling but it shook though my body like an orgasm. It was a feeling like a loss of control and yet not. The feeling of stress leaving the body, or leaving via the body, was like a spiritual experience (except that it was physical not spiritual). As she went over and over an area of my back, working out a knot, I experienced it like a rollercoaster, up, up and over and each time me trying to relax and let it wash over me and not fight against it. The feeling of rebirth afterwards, a mild euphoria, and the next morning, skipping, singing, even my voice sounded better.
In the pool this week there was some kind of gala going on in one half and there was a PA system, plugged into the mains, on a stand inches away from the pool. I thought of people being electrocuted when their hairdryer falls in the bath. I wondered if such a big amount of water would dilute it or would we all die. Would it hurt? Okay, I thought, everyone’s okay. There would probably be compensation. I wrote my book. And my blog. I found God. I was happy. I wouldn’t have to worry about or deal with old age or illness. I accepted it. They unplugged it. Oh well, not my time.
I read a blog about blogging, in which the advice given was, that you need to do it for a year before you know if it’s worth doing. That advice could also apply to spiritual practice. Although I already know it’s worth doing, it’s more about a test of my commitment, much like how healing training takes two years.
After a weekend of complete R&R I realised I wasn’t going mad or embarking on a dangerous course, risking losing connection with my husband; I was just tired that’s all. A week of staying up too late, working late and getting up early to go to a conference, that was all. I do like to catastrophise (have I said that before?). In bed one night, my husband enfolded me into his arms and I felt our breathing merge, felt myself merging into him at each contact point. This long, no sex cuddle was like being in a cocoon or having steel bands of love wrapped around me, and the next morning I realised, not only can I love God through loving my husband but God can love me through the love my husband gives to me.
*my husband’s friend DJ
**on a good day, anyway