The opener of my book!

Tags

Burn out, Change your life, escape the matrix, Midlife awakening, Minimalism, Travel memoir

I fell in love with you and I cried

Rachel Hill

‘We look down on people who choose themselves first, people who make the most of the lives they’ve been given.’ Natalie Swift, The Darkest Tunnel, WordPress

“The coop is guarded from the inside.” Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger

 

Chapter One Following the white rabbit

April 2017, Harleston, Norfolk, UK

It was a weekend morning, I was standing in the hallway between the bedroom and the bathroom, John, my husband was in bed. He said, ‘What kind of people would we have to be to sell the house and just leave everything and everyone and go off on an adventure?’

‘Strong’, I said, ‘We’d have to be so strong’. Electricity ran up the length of my spine.
‘Wow,’ John said, ‘I just felt a tingle go right through my body.’

I was forty-seven years old. In terms of career and property, I had gone as far as I could and as far as I wanted to. Head of Occupational Therapy at a specialist secure hospital and living in a three bedroom semi detached house in a pleasant little town on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. But now what? Was I just going to keep on working and living there until I retired, grew old and died (and that was if I was lucky/the best case scenario)?

The house was perfect, a solidly built three bedroom 1950s ex council house with a huge garden. It was near my job, near my mother. We were happy there, and with me no longer having a long drive to work I began to relax, to be happy, and we both began to dream. Just over a year after we had moved in and supposedly settled for life, we began to roll around the idea of dismantling it all, selling the house, buying a camper van and travelling the world or going to live in a healing centre in Mexico run by an old friend of John’s.

Work had got the point where I was bored and looking for progression or development that never materialised whilst simultaneously feeling exhausted from the pressures of modern healthcare and emotionally burned out from the heart breaking and shocking stories of abuse and sexual offending. I couldn’t face the idea of doing it for another twenty years. Funnily enough I got a new manager who actually asked me, apropos of nothing, if I were planning to carry on working until I retired, ‘Or was I going to go off to India or something?’

I began to ask myself, what would I do if I didn’t have to do anything? What would I do if anything was possible? What would I do if I could do whatever I wanted?

When we first had the conversation and I experienced the glittering thrill of possibility, it was the first time in recent memory that I had allowed myself to think about what I actually might want. Since becoming pregnant at the age of eighteen my life had revolved around my son in one way or another. Even though he was now twenty-seven years old, I hadn’t seriously thought about leaving Norfolk until very recently, when an advertisement had jumped out at me for a job in Guernsey.

We went to Guernsey for two nights, the job sounded amazing, the interview went perfectly, but we didn’t want to move to Guernsey. Looking back, this was practical action that shifted us. It got us both wondering if we could live away from our kids. The initial weekend morning conversation was in April, the Guernsey trip was in June and in September my manager, realising I was burning out, allowed me to drop down to four days week. So really, those two nights in Guernsey marked the start of a shift in mental attitude that ultimately was to propel us all the way to India.

Ironically, for the first time in years, John had a job he loved, caring for people with learning disabilities as part of a lovely team, several of whom became friends. His two children lived with their mother in London and were now teenagers and rarely came to stay with us anymore. Both our mums had downsized and we had ended up having the biggest house in both families, yet no one came up, hardly anyone came to visit, and anyway we never were huge entertainers.

Our previous house had been a small two bedroom house in the same village as John’s mum and sister and when the kids were younger we’d had a lot of fun there. The new house was bigger and his daughter had her own room at last but she never even put a picture up. It became really obvious that it wasn’t their home, much more so than the previous house. That house, although smaller was about everyone, this one, although bigger, was just us. Like most parents, we misjudged how fast the kids grew up.

We had bought the house in Harleston from a widow who had lived in it with her husband from when it was first built in 1952, with many of the original features and it hadn’t been decorated since he last did it in the 1980s. I was besotted with the original glass lampshades, small chandeliers and old garden ornaments. John and I talked about getting old and dying there; the conveniences of the shops, doctors, dentists etc were much better than where we’d lived previously, all within easy walking distance or range of a mobility scooter.

On evening just after we’d moved in, sitting by the fireplace we had a premonition of sitting there as old people and at the same time felt as if we’d always been there through all the time of the house. I saw us sitting by the fireplace through the 1980s, and then later John old and with a beard. We realised that if we didn’t do anything we’d get old and die there.

I thought about old people whose homes haven’t been decorated for years and who have had the same things around them for decades. As they do less outside the home and spend more time inside, maybe the wallpaper, the furniture, the ornaments all loom larger because those things are given more attention and are tied with the memories they hold. People say that possessions and objects are important because they hold our memories. When people customise their homes they say they put something of themselves into it.

It was at this time that we began to discuss what we needed, something big enough and no bigger, a one bedroom flat, a caravan, a boat. To have a solid shelter, with heat that comes on with the flick of a switch, clean drinking water and hot running water with the turn of a tap, comfortable seating and sleeping areas, plenty of bedding and warm clothes, a washing machine. These things are denied to many. Even one thing off this list would represent enormous progress, even luxury, to some. Many of us who have these things do not fully appreciate them.

Not only that, the progress and comfort they represent and provide becomes grossly extended, with people changing their furniture before it has even worn out, and painting the inside of their homes a different colour according to what is deemed fashionable that season. ‘Needs updating,’ such a spurious phrase that has helped give rise to the largely unnecessary industries of producing new ‘kitchens’ and ‘bathrooms’ and the mind boggling array of paint colours on offer.

Of course, we need to have shelter but there’s probably an optimum level of comfort. If things are too hard, that takes so much time and energy that there’s no space for creativity. If things get too comfortable, one can be lulled into a false sense of security. Somehow by being too comfortable we become less aware: in our centrally heated comfort zones it’s easy to fall back to sleep.

Everything is arranged so that our biggest and best experiences are early in our lives and this, plus the emphasis on youth in film, television shows and advertising means that people spend most of their lives looking back to ‘the good old days,’ and taking their power and energy away from the present. You can see this in young people’s gap year travels before they ‘settle down’ to work, marry, have children… and in big event weddings, ‘the best day of your life’ with just the photographs on the mantelpiece to sustain you for the rest of your ‘less good’ life.

We had met eight years previously. Meeting John and falling in love had triggered a full on tripped out spiritual awakening for me. Because his children were still young and my son still needed quite a bit of support, we explored ideas of spirituality, personal growth etc from the comfort of our living room. We were lucky, that we both had the same ideas.

At the start it wasn’t even about selling the house and leaving the kids (that was too scary at first) it was just about getting to a position where we could. The decluttering came first, before the travelling was a solid plan and caused the mental shifts required in order for the travel to become a solid plan. I had to declutter in order to go and the decluttering helped me to go.

I was petrified of the idea of doing something so unthinkable, of giving up the security of property. Yet at the same time I was really excited about the idea of letting go of possessions and leaving with just a backpack each and no keys. I wrote: ‘For me it’s not really about travelling per se, it’s about testing my long felt urge to trust-fall into the universe, to let my fingertips peel from the cliff face and slip into the unknown. Mainly, it is about freedom; about realising where I am, what I have and therefore what I am able to do, with a bit of guts and imagination. The thought of just going off for a while with no plan other than to go travelling and keep writing is thrilling.’

In the UK, there’s such a drive towards home ownership as a goal that selling a property goes so much against the grain; family and home owning friends were dead against the idea. We had to sell up to liquidate capital, to have sufficient money for the trip. Not only that, we wanted to simplify, practise minimalism. Renting out the house and returning wasn’t what I had in mind, even if we could have afforded to do that. I didn’t want to have, as an acquaintance at work had had, a life changing experience in South East Asia for a year only to return to the same life. I might not have known what I wanted, but I was very sure about what I didn’t want.

Because you are choosing to have less, and no matter what all the memes etc. say you are going completely against the herd, who are all focused on getting more, so it feels weird and hard. You are going against the conditioning of the society you have been brought up in. That was why, during the several months of thinking, planning and putting the house on market, I was mentally quite aggressive. I said to myself, ‘I need to smash this down with a sledgehammer; I need to tear it up by the roots.’

I ruthlessly decluttered sentimental items. The bigger the action, the stronger I felt. It took a lot more energy than I had anticipated. I found that I did a splurge on something then had to stop for a bit. It was like going up steps or stages. We got tired. At other times, decluttering would seem to release a spurt of energy that propelled us forward. It was a balance between theory and practical steps, between wrapping our minds around it and then taking the necessary steps, interspersed with rest. And of course all the time we were going to work and doing the normal stuff of life.

The more I got rid of the lighter I felt, the more energy I had and the more I began to feel like a traveller. As the objects from my old life were left behind, I felt that I could become someone new, the kind of person who can do this.

What do you think?  Would you keep on reading?

Thank you very much for visiting

Rachel

Geography Of The Moon

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, Geography of the moon, Ho Chi Minh, Minimalism, Music, Travel, Traveling, Travelling, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

The man at the bus stop in Da Lat asked us if we lived in Ho Chi Minh City.  It seemed strange to imagine the possibility.  The following evening in the taxi on the way to the gig, we admired the city.  Tall skinny blocks of matching buildings, square blocks of flats with outlines almost drawn around them in white light, a collection of buildings lit in various neon lights, and best of all Building 81, the second tallest in South East Asia (the tallest is in Malaysia apparently.)

We had seen it coming in on the coach, like a child’s building block tower, the stacks narrower and narrower until a thin point.  Interesting in the day, and spectacular at night, lit up like a computer motherboard, and in front of it chunky blocks of flats looming black out of the darkness, lit in patches, like something out of The Matrix or Bladerunner.

I’m disappointed that I can’t find the clip of this; I thought YouTube had everything.  I’ll describe it as accurately as I can from memory.  In Billions, Taylor begins a romance with Oscar.  Taylor and Oscar go back to Oscar’s after their first proper date.  He has a classy apartment and a great sound system.  He presses a button or whatever and on comes The Killing Moon, by Echo and the Bunnymen.

‘Is this okay?’  Oscar asks.  ‘It’s what I would have hoped for, had I thought about it.’  Taylor answers.

Much is written about how as people get older they stop listening to new music.  It’s hard for anything new to compete with things that are so loved.  Or for things not to remind you of something you already know, and prefer.  And sometimes it’s about wanting to lean on someone older, even though they were young when they made it.  And having seen so much music, been to so many gigs, it’s easier to get picky and hard to impress.

What would we have wanted that night, had we thought of it?  Turns out it was Geography Of The Moon.

Timing:  The day before I’d read Des’s post about going to a very special show in Seattle.  Before the first song was finished… play for me my Lord a song that I can sing… I realised I was going to do a post about going to a gig too.  Psychedelic enough for my husband.  Mournful enough for me, with the kinds of lines I like such as, the taste of a thousand dirty mouths.  

Timing, again: a song that could have been written just for us at that time: wanderlust… the future is unknown… the universe will provide… remember you will die make this an interesting ride…

We’d been in a temporary slump, experiencing a lack of confidence, and then we meet these two.  They had lived on a boat in London, and were now on the road touring Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, just the two of them.

It was good for me and my husband to have a night out.  We were out until 2am and up much later, the noisiest ones in the hostel (except for the staff downstairs who were smoking marijuana, listening to loud music and hugging inflatable balls…)

 

Thank you very much for reading

March 31st 2019 The Matrix 20 year anniversary

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, The matrix, The Matrix 20 year anniversary, The Matrix 20 years, The Matrix 20 years later

I believe in following the white rabbit.  Do you?

I’m not necessarily braver than you.  I’m not necessarily any more mentally intact.  I actually physically went somewhere else, but that isn’t necessarily necessary for everyone.

I woke up in my life and realised I had to do something in order not to die without having lived.  Watching, and thinking about, The Matrix, and Alice in Wonderland- see blog, helped me break free and dismantle my old life.  Placebo provided the soundtrack see blog explaining their impact.  My Escape the matrix posts one two and three

It is twenty years since the Matrix film was released see my previous post.

I watched The Matrix with fresh eyes once I started ‘waking up,’ at the time I didn’t get it.  It was the same with Blade Runner.  Later I watched  Black Mirror and Battlestar Gallactica.  Westworld will do it too, but that’s too violent for me to watch.

I sometimes think about where we ‘really’ are, and the nature of reality.  I sometimes think of being a brain in a tank, or going ‘back into the tank’ to regroup, especially when I was in the capsule in Tokyo! 

I have on occasion believed I just arrived in this day or moment, and that all my memories are a feed.  I also sometimes think, Wow, if I created this back story for myself, I really did a number on myself.  It’s not glaringly dramatic, I sometimes think that much more extreme lives might have been experienced by this consciousness, but that this is the last one and so is fine tuned to have any experiences that were missed previously; the things that upset me are so complicated and subtle and detailed and just keep on hurting, and therefore keep me emeshed and prevent me waking up fully.  In Blade Runner, they implanted memories, families, a back story, into the robots ‘to make them easier to control.’  I still feel a bit goosebumpy thinking about that

In Siem Reap we watched The Thirteenth Floor and afterwards went for a walk.  Me feeling like I’d just arrived, Look at that, look at that.  A purple building, a row of neon lights.  I had to sit down on a bench, but even that was overstimulating, pictured above; shells and mosaics are kind of a thing for me.  I decided to have a working hypothesis that it’s a matrix.  That would mean: don’t worry about what people think, in cafes, walking past, don’t get distracted.  Instead focus attention, choose, consciously choose, don’t go around saying hi to everyone, don’t waste energy, don’t feel self conscious, don’t be scared of mother, believe I can do anything that any similar person can do i.e. write book.

Since then I’ve been lower, and right now I’m higher, confidence and frequency and understanding wise.

There can be many signs that awareness is increasing.  It can be seeing the beauty and feeling bliss.  It can be seeing the beautiful things even when feeling very bad.  Beyond that, it can be seeing things in real life that I’ve just seen on Netflix , or vice versa.  Or hearing similar conversations.  Or timing.  Or meeting people you need to meet.  Or the clock whenever I look at it saying 04:40 or similar: when I turned on my tablet to write this post and looked at the clock it said 07:07.

It’s about fearlessness.

Beyond all the films, books, the spiritual teachings, the New Age philosophy, it’s about waking up into your life.  And realising, really  realising, that you are a being, that you are here, in a life, in this world.  That you are conscious, that you are alive, but that you will die and that that could happen anytime.

Once you realise this, as Neo said, what you do with that information is up to you…

Thank you very much for reading

‘If you think you’re enlightened, try going home for Thanksgiving

Tags

Anything is possible, artists, confidence, mother daughter relationships, mother son relationships, Parenting, Self realisation, separating from adult children, Shaman, shamanic ritual

For SMUT and Self-Esteem, a very wise and perfectly written blog. Reflecting on everyday experience through tools such as mindfulness and Buddhist teachings.

Even at the age of forty seven I was scared about telling my mum of our plans to give up work and go off to India, particularly about selling the house. And on the way to telling her about the boat I was as nervous as if I were on my way to hospital for an operation. I played the song above, ‘You say you can’t, I hope you can, I hope you can…’

My mother is an astonishingly capable individual, potentially a lot to live up to, and who has very strong opinions. But feeling as if I’m not free to live my life as I wish to because of what she might think or say isn’t on her, it’s on me.

Again and again people say, no one can have power over you without your consent, and such like. Certainly in the run up to going away I said the same kinds of things to myself and tried to deal with it on an intellectual level. I did what needed to be done, but I made a big palaver about it, putting things off and getting stressed out, and expending a lot of time and energy on it all.

On Thursday of last week we made our first trip back to Norfolk to visit people. Firstly we went to see our dear friend K, who made us a lovely lunch*, let us go on about India, and was very supportive about my book and our ideas. She asked us each if and how we thought the year of travel had changed us. We both said we felt it had, but that we didn’t know exactly how yet.

Then we drove over to see my mum. Towards the end of the year of travel I had had dreams about this meeting, and woken feeling anxious and intimidated, as I was when I visited before I left. This time, I didn’t feel even a flicker of nerves on the way there, and sailed through the visit authentically and confidently. We showed her photographs, she made us a delicious meal**, and we chatted about general topics. We all seemed happy to see each other, and had a nice time.

In the past I had involved her too much in my life, and I had felt shadowed by her strong opinions. The year away provided the opportunity to reset boundaries. I’m sure she doesn’t approve of everything I’m doing but she appears to have accepted that I’m doing it anyway, and didn’t question or comment.

I know it’s because she cares but I have to have this bit of separation in order to fully realise my own personal potential.

I wasn’t fake friendly or fake tough, I was totally myself during that time, and that is best described as relaxed and powerful. And it just happened that way, that’s how I’ve changed. (Just got to keep it up!)

Then we went to see my son. He’s not, as far as I’m aware, working on the same things with me, but I know he’s done better the less I’ve been involved in his life, culminating in him being offered, while I was away this year, the chance to exhibit in New York in May.

(I still have to work on resetting habits and expectations re money though, now that he is almost thirty and I am not working at the moment.)

We all acknowledged that he’d done the best all by himself, and I told him what the Swiss shaman I met in Kerala had told me, that when you have a baby it is your job to ‘Give them the bliss,’ but then when they grow up you must set them free. The shaman said I must set my son free so that he can become a great artist.

*beetroot and chickpea burgers, pasta in tomato sauce and broccoli
**vegetable curry, rice, samosas, and apple crumble and (soya) custard
We were thoroughly spoiled that day!
Thank you very much for reading

the end and the beginning

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

In April 2017 we asked ourselves, what would we do if we could do anything?  The answer was stop working and go off travelling.
Just less than a year later, in March 2018, we left good jobs, sold our house, gave away most of our possessions and went to South East Asia, mainly India, for a year.  Here are my India highlights.

Getting from April 2017 to March 2018 was scary at times.  B, a fellow blogger and now friend who I met here on WP, sent me the Rilke quote above which is useful now too.

Before we left the UK we bought a narrowboat to live on when we get back.  It is moored in an area that was unfamiliar to either of us, we spent two very happy weeks on it before we left.

It’s natural to feel some anxiety about our return home (in less than a week!) and there have been times when it has tipped into fear.  With regular meditation helping I have recently experienced it as excitement rather than anxiety, and the future being unmapped as seeming expansive and joyful rather than scary.

I’ve channelled my anxiety into getting this week’s and next week’s blog posts prepared and scheduled.  The following week I hope to be back with an update re life back in the UK and on the boat.

I am not full of doom and gloom about returning to the UK, I’m excited about seeing friends and family.  My son has done amazingly well since we’ve been away, as well as facing his fears and getting his teeth done, his career as an artist has taken off, and his work is being exhibited in New York in May, see flier below!

Thank you very much for reading

For photographs of the trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

The rains

Tags

Blogging, India, Travel, writing

‘Even a plant that has died can come back to life during the rains.’ (Umesh, restaurant owner)

What’s on top

The monsoon is imminent.  One evening we actually felt cold and rued abandoning our fleeces, jumpers and warm socks in Delhi.  It has an effect on wildlife.  In the guesthouse we saw a biggish snake about to eat a very big frog, before being chased out.  There was another smaller snake in the guesthouse a couple of days ago, as it was being chased out it ran under another guest’s door and he had to be woken up to alert him.

I got a rickshaw into town one day, we later met the man and found he has a restaurant, a small local place at the other end of our road, near tiny shops and stalls where we bought bananas.  We promised to go and get breakfast there next week.  Exploring, trying out this new area was quite exciting and made us feel strangely enlivened, even though it isn’t at all far away.  My husband said that maybe it’s because we aren’t doing much, that a little bit of change has an effect.  A few days earlier, we had felt restless, and even went to look at some other guesthouses, before realising that where we are is still the best (for now anyway).

We’ve been in Kerala for a month but it was only a couple of days ago that I had a beer, for the first time since Goa and realised that alcohol is restricted in this state.  It is legal in bars and Government liquor stores but not in all restaurants.  My beer was served in a large mug and the can put discreetly under the table because of the police.  Sometimes groups of men come to the guesthouse and rent a room just for the evening to socialise and drink.

Rahul, who works at the guesthouse nine months out of twelve has gone back to his family in Assam, over 3,500 miles and a three day train journey away.  We used to chat to him every day, swapping language tips and photos of home and he and my husband played carrom together.  R, a guest from Switzerland who we had some interesting talks with has also left.  We and a permanent resident who works at the temple are the only guests now.

After two months of eating out for every meal, we’ve been enjoying making porridge in the guesthouse kitchen.  Oats and bananas are easily available with dried fruit and soya milk sold in some places. Cooking, even something so simple as porridge, has been very nice, and the porridge has tasted especially good, maybe because it’s a taste of home.

My favourite food to eat out at the moment is Gobi Manchurian,  cauliflower but not as you know it.  Battered and either ‘dry’ (deep fried with caramelised onions) or ‘with gravy’ (softer in a delicious rich sauce).  I wince at the thought of school dinner cauliflower and what the chefs here would think of that!

I’ve been doing quite a bit of yoga and experiencing little moments of ease and awareness; of being able to be kind to myself and flexible re my routine as well as get things done (something I really struggle with).  Also a sense of arriving in my own body, being happy with what I see and not comparing myself to others (another thing I struggle with).

Rain has meant a lovely Sunday afternoon type feeling, watching a film in the daytime as rain poured down outside.  When the film finished it had stopped raining, it was still light outside and we went out to eat.  As well as the sound of rain there’s the sound of hard green fruits hitting the tin roof at regular intervals and the almost incessant barking and/or howling of dogs.

What I’ve been watching

Partition (film)
Her (film)
Battlestar Galactica
Thirteen reasons why (Season one, I’m a late convert)

What I’ve been reading

Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh (about Partition)

(So basically Partition and the nature of consciousness, with a bit of High School misery thrown in.)

Writing update

I’ve worked really hard this week and completed a draft of Chapter One (actually more like chapters 1, 2, and 3).  This covers the period of how we got here:  Nothing to lose but our dignity (the idea); No half measures (the decluttering and giving up everything); The Matrix fights back (obstacles and temptations).  There’s still polishing and editing and probably some moving about to be done, but I am leaving it alone for now.

Yesterday I started work on Goa, which is where we went after Delhi.  It was really interesting reading my notes and blogs from that time.  I think I feel a lot stronger and more confident than I did then.

Today I just worked on this blog post.  Last week and this week I have ring fenced Friday only as the blog day and the rest of  the week for the book.  The good thing about this is that it separates the two nicely, especially as at the moment the book work is about previous months not where we are now.

It also ensures the book work gets done; writing the book is hard work and the blog is more fun.  It’s also written in the present tense and so seems more lively than the book.  Plus it allows me to change my opinions week by week.  I intend to complete the book, but I think in an ideal world I’d be a blogger rather than a book writer.  But maybe that’s just what I think this week.

The disadvantage of not starting the blog post until Friday is if like today I get distracted by talking and don’t start the blog until later then it’s a bit more pressure but hey, it’s not like I’ve got anything else to do.

Thank you for reading

See you next week

I know what to do

Tags

amwriting, India, Kovalam Beach, Papanasam Beach, Patricia Lockwood, Stranger in a Strange Land, Varkala, writing

What’s on top?

During random blog reading I came across a beautiful piece of writing, my favourite quote from it and a link to the original piece below:

Stand exactly in a doorway like a cat and try to feel the religious feeling that a cat clearly feels when it stands in a doorway.  Patricia Lockwood

I am reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein.  (The reading of this has to be prioritised as it is our biggest and heaviest book and my husband is sick of carrying it.)  Written in 1961, if you can ignore the awful sexism, the intellectual, metaphysical and spiritual ideas in it are very interesting.

Discussions continue about the nature of reality (too in depth to explore here, also whatever theories I believe this week will probably change again by next week); whilst at the same time feeling lively and vibrant within this current reality.

Travel update 

We went to Kovalam beach for two nights, an hour’s train journey away.  There were lots of Indian tourists, it is vacation time here, and a very few foreign tourists.  We got lots of pressure from stall holders and street sellers:  tailors services, clothes, scarves, drums, ornaments and fruit.  We even got followed down the road by a man who looked well into his seventies trying to sell us marijuana.

The beach was nice:  black sand, the sea shiny, glassy looking with the reflected light of the setting sun, with big frothy white waves.  Our room was white, clean, with white bed linen, towels* and a top sheet** and was probably the nicest room we’ve stayed in so far.

In the evening we walked out of the tourist area, past chai stalls and tiny little shops which are absolutely packed with everything you could need compressed into the smallest of spaces, some not much bigger than a cupboard.

The train was easy, we bought tickets on the day and travelled in normal non ac carriages.  On the way we had to stand but it wasn’t a long journey.  We had breakfast (masala dosas) in a canteen style restaurant on the station.  We were unsure of what to do but an Indian man came and explained how it worked and even came to check we had got our food okay.

It was very nice to return to Varkala.  We were welcomed warmly and came back to the same room, where we had been able to leave the big backpack and lighten our load.  As much as possible we intend to stay here and just go off to other places in Kerala for a few days at a time.

Photo:  Crow at the edge of the Osho guesthouse’s rooftop yoga space. She/he appeared after my yoga session, stayed quite close and waited patiently whilst I took their photo.  The caw caw of crows is a constant background noise.  On Papanasam beach there are usually lots of crows; they eat rice off banana leaves left from pujas.  However, returning ‘home’ after two days away, there were very few crows but lots of dark grey pigeons.  ‘Look, the crows have been replaced by pigeons,’ I said.  ‘Perhaps there’s been some kind of coo’, my husband said.

A few days ago, on Papanasam beach, during a little walk and a look at the sea after dinner, a man came up to us, ordinary, well dressed, with friends.  He said hello then said: ‘Look, look at the sea, close your eyes, breathe into your chest, hold…  Hear only the sea…  my voice.  There, do you feel comfort?’ I love that this kind of thing happens here.

This week has been about setting and sticking to a strict budget, which  is easy to do whilst we’re based in Varkala as the guesthouse and the local cafe are both cheap.  We’ve been eating masala dosas for breakfast, lunch and dinner, interspersed with channa masala (chickpea curry, good for vegans), beans on toast** (likewise), porridge and banana and fresh fruit and vegetable juices.  We both feel much better for not overeating (and not overspending).

Writing update

Saturday, session one typing up new ‘meaning of life’ type ideas, session two, typing up Varkala notes from notebook; Sunday, two sessions on Delhi section.  By the second session I saw how to do it, the need to remake it more personal, with emotion, not just like a travel diary.  Monday, two sessions on Delhi; I ended up with a 4,000 word draft which although needs polishing and editing was ready enough to show to my husband.  I was very pleased with myself as I had been scared of that chapter.  Scared of some notes I have written myself, for a book that I am writing for no other reason than my own pleasure?  Crazy but true.  Tuesday, day off.  Wednesday, I tackled Chapter One (how we got here, the background).  I had been even more scared of that chapter than of Delhi, but I sat down and approached it with a (new) calm confidence.

Maybe because I had done Delhi, maybe because of my general confidence and self belief improving?  I took my own advice and reordered it chronologically, breaking it into three sections:  Nothing to Lose But Our Dignity (the original ‘sell up and go travelling’ idea, and some background); No Half Measures (about decluttering and its effects); and The Matrix Fights Back (about all the obstacles we had to deal with in our quest to escape).  It is currently 9,000 words, so I am being kind to myself and acknowledging that no wonder it was difficult to sort out.  But I know what to do, I can see where it is flabby, where it goes off track, where it needs work.  I know what to do, and that makes me very happy indeed.  Thursday, two sessions on this blog post.  Friday, one session on Chapter One, one to finish this post.

*Only a few of the places we’ve stayed have had towels.  Standing on the train, feeling the sweat trickling down my legs, I said to myself, please let there be towels.  I was dreaming of a shower, clean white towels.  Any colour for that matter.  We sat on the veranda while the man made up our bed. When he had finished, he brought…  towels!

**Most places don’t give a top sheet as standard.  Although it’s hot it feels weird to lie with nothing at all, and sometimes in the middle of the night it can feel almost chilly.  We were so excited about the towels that we forgot to ask for one, and when we returned after dinner there was no one around.  Later, at 9.15 at night there was a knock at the door…  it was the man, bringing us a crisp white sheet!  And we hadn’t even asked him!

**Sometimes it’s nice to have something plain and also beans are lacking elsewhere, so I often have beans on toast.  It was lunchtime and they are only on the breakfast menu, but I really wanted them.  ‘I’m going to beg, watch me get them,’ I said to my husband.  And I did (I didn’t need to beg though, just ask nicely).

Thank you for reading

See you next week

Not just a travel blog

Tags

escape the matrix, India, Minimalism, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

My new ‘About’ page/introduction for new readers:

Not just a travel blog.  Can get quite personal.  You have been warned!

Hello, my name is Rachel, welcome to my blog.

This is where I reveal my true thoughts and feelings.  This is a kind of coming out, to borrow words from a friend.

With my husband we have got rid of most of our possessions, sold the house and are travelling in South East Asia.

I do write about places I visit and put pictures up.  But I also just write about everything.

I’m more art than science; for me it’s about the experience rather than the thing itself.  It’s not about the travelling per se, rather the effect it has on me.

Thank you very much for reading

Books and stories by me

How to Find Heaven on Earth: love, spirituality and everyday life   The story of my ‘spiritual awakening’ available as paperback or ebook on amazon

Call off the Search: how I stopped seeking and found peace My second ‘spiritual journey’ book, published chapter by chapter on this blog beginning on 8th July 2017

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness My third book, published chapter by chapter on this blog, beginning on 17th July 2017

Short stories in women’s erotica anthologies available on Amazon

Make it Happy a short book about long term relationships available on Amazon

Self help for the suicidal, a workbook for people struggling with suicidal thoughts available on Amazon

Agonda beach

Tags

Agonda, Goa, India, Travel

We book one night ahead on booking.com then choose somewhere to move onto in person.  We got a taxi to Agonda from Colva (about an hour), we could have got a bus but I needed the  journey to be as fast and as comfortable as possible.  It was a wonderful journey, through small towns and villages, past tree covered mountains (possibly hills, but coming from super flat Norfolk, England, they look like mountains to me) and lots and lots of cows some with big curly horns (I love cows).  All the windows were down and the car was filled with a lovely breeze.

And then we were in Agonda.  Agonda and Colva are as different as Southwold and Great Yarmouth (for UK readers only sorry).  We arrived too early to check in (we had got up early to travel before it got really hot) so we went and sat in one of the many beach front bar/restaurants and had breakfast (toast and ginger tea).

Whearas in Colva and in Delhi I had been marooned in a hot hotel room during the hottest part of the day (which is most of the day, to be honest), here I realised I could be ‘outside’ (under shade) and with the breeze blowing in off the sea it was entirely bearable.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Earlier that day in the hot hotel room in Colva I had envisioned months of being shut in a room all day.  Good for writing productivity, but there are limits.  I had been very apprehensive of going to India, or anywhere in South East Asia, at this time.  Most people go to India between November and February, when it is not so hot.  But if we’re going to be out for a year, we are going to be in the hottest time at some point.  And we had to go when we could go, i.e. when the house sold, and with all the obstacles that the matrix seemed to put up I wasn’t inclined to wait a moment longer to leave.

Agonda is touristy, but in a palm trees, beautiful sandy beach, luxury holiday look kind of way.  The beach is long and framed at each end by green lush tree covered mountains (?hills).  Our beach hut had a veranda that was shaded and cool enough to sit out on even in the middle of the day.  The owner said, don’t worry that it’s hot inside in the day, at night it will be okay.  And it was.  It was the first time I had slept under a mosquito net.  We would have happily stayed there but it was fully booked, so my husband went off and found us an (even better!) place.  Up high, reached from some steps, more space in the room, and a big cool veranda shaded with palm trees.  And right on the beach.  We are staying here for two weeks.

I was so relieved to unpack (I am such a homebody, but can make myself at home easily too), and do things like cut my nails and wax my face and floss my teeth properly.  (I still haven’t shaved my legs yet though, if I put it off much longer I’ll need a lawnmower.)

The beach huts are amazing.  I had imagined beach huts like we get in English seaside towns, but these are more like wooden chalets, with proper washrooms and everything, and the incredible thing is that they aren’t allowed to stay here permanently so they get dismantled at the end of April.  I wondered how they go about that, do they label all the bits, or do they just know?  I struggle to remember how to put my tent up once a year.

I once wrote an utterly heartfelt review on Amazon for Eat Pray Love, my bible for many years.  I had read that book seven times, written notes in it, folded over almost every page…  I knew I was genuine, so when someone commented, ‘This review is as pretentious as the book itself,’ it only made me laugh rather than hurt my feelings.

The first day here I did a bit of yoga out on the veranda (too hot indoors), using a rug from in the room, and then without even thinking about it just dropped into meditation, sitting half against the door jamb, resting after a set of one of those super strong hip opener poses (sleeping swan, half pigeon?), pulling the ends of the rug so as to buffer my ankle bones from the wooden floor.  I adjusted my position to be straight against the wall, but otherwise I was right there, for quite a while, despite the fact that I haven’t meditated for ages.

This wasn’t meditation aimed at or coming from a religious or spiritual angle, although it would probably be best described by the Buddhist meditation ‘Just sitting’, because I did nothing other than just check in with myself, deep inside.  And what I noticed was fear.  Fearful breathing, anyway, which I took to mean there’s fear there, or that fear is the thing going on for me, deep inside.  I had recently, possibly even only the day before, read a blog post by Alexander Bell about how if you calm your breathing so it isn’t fearful, then you won’t feel fear.  Try as I might though, my breathing remained shallow, tight, almost painful, and seemed to get worse the more I focussed on it.  So I remembered what the post had said about if you have a pounding heartbeat, just observe it, and observing it will naturally calm it.  I didn’t have a pounding heartbeat, but I used this approach for my breathing, and eventually, at last, I broke through to a place where I felt at peace, no fear.  As often used to happen to me in meditation, images came to mind; me opening a door, only to drop down an empty lift shaft and arrive, on a seat, in a room, and then again, somewhere different.

We’ve done a lot of moving about, and I’m a real homebody as I said.  I’ve hardly even been on holiday, and coupled with the pre leaving stress, it’s not surprising there’s fear in me.  And of course I’ve been sick, but then tummies are emotional too aren’t they?

(Just in case I sound pretentious here, writing about doing yoga and meditating on a beach hut veranda in Goa, please know that I did this on the train from Norwich to Nottingham (the meditation) and yoga in any hotel room I’ve been in with work in the UK using a towel or a jumper.)

We’ve had three nights here, and each day I have got up at 6.30 or 7am, had a paddle and a walk on the beach, a walk to the shops before it gets too hot, before retreating to the balcony/indoors for a siesta until the evening.  This is much better than sleeping late as you get to experience more time outside.  Also the beach in the morning is amazing, with incredible (must be teachers) people doing yoga, it is awesome what they can do with their bodies.

For my part, a short walk in the waves and/or a few stretches in the afternoon is all I can manage at present.  Today is day seven of traveller’s diarrhoea and today my husband took a Tuk Tuk to Palolem to go to the chemist and came back with gut flora and strong antibiotics for me.  He has looked after me all the way through and apart from the first night in Delhi when I went out to buy fruit and this morning when I went to the very nearby shops to buy water, juice and crisps (rehydration, sugars and salts) and fresh local bananas (potassium), I haven’t done anything on my own.  I also haven’t always been that nice, and I am realising how much I hurt my husband’s feelings when I get annoyed about stuff he has or hasn’t said or done, when all he is doing is looking after me.  But I don’t often know until later what it is I am unhappy about, and then I struggle to express it.  I tend to come across as annoyed when in fact I am feeling overwhelmed or vulnerable, I just don’t like to admit it.

A couple of times recently, if I’d stopped and thought about it, I could have said, that’s a great idea but I can’t manage that just yet.  Or, actually, can you come with me, I’d rather not be on my own.  In that way I am literally like a chicken, they are prey animals, therefore they don’t show their vulnerabilities.  I don’t like to feel, let alone admit to, feelings of pressure/ inability to deliver, shame, or fear of abandonment.  In other ways I am like a child, if I get sad my tummy hurts more, and I’ll seek comfort and attention by describing my physical ailments.   We are both much worse and much better than we realise, is a Buddhist quote I read about becoming more aware of ourselves.  India has a lot to teach me, which is good, because I have a lot to learn.

My husband has just started doing a vlog, if you want to check it out here is the link.

Thank you very much for reading!

Lots of love

Rachel xxxx

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

 

Nothing to lose but our dignity

Tags

India, Minimalism, Stewart Lee

The dear little brown rabbit is to accompany me on my travels and be photographed for Instagram followingthebrownrabbit.  Well that’s the intention, maybe they will just be cuddled a lot and see me through my anxiety.  Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety interspersed with feeling very excited.

The Lovely Bones (a book about a girl who gets murdered and the aftermath for her family), apparently the title has nothing to do with ‘bones’ but about the support structures that spring up around people after a loss.

On Friday night we went out for leaving drinks with my husband’s sister, her daughter and her new boyfriend, and my son.  Seeing everyone was really lovely.  Especially lovely was seeing my sister-in-law getting on really well with my son, taking the time to chat to him one to one and being genuinely interested in and praising his art and his talent.  Nicest of all, she initiated them exchanging phone numbers and talking about meeting up to go round art galleries together.

Today, she said she’d be there for him while we were away.  My husband thanked her for me and she said, I just looked at him and I thought I need to get your phone number, you are Rachel’s son.  I cried then I was so touched.  Another friend of mine, an artist, has called him about collaborating/advice.

So I have learned this week:
1. There’s no such thing as a free lunch (see previous post)
2. There really is light in the darkest of places, as long as one remembers to turn on the light (from Harry Potter)
3. The Lovely Bones, one of my favourite books, is named after a concept that has come true for me this week
4. Don’t leave it until the window goes from green to red to empty the boat toilet (very heavy).  It might not be one of the best jobs of boat life, but little and often is the key.

On our way!  Me and my husband at the bus stop this morning!  We are staying  tonight with a friend in London and flying to Delhi on Monday evening.

This is my empty clothes drawer and the pile in the photo above is all of my clothes that I am leaving.  I realised today that I haven’t worn hardly any of them since being on the boat, but also that I have lots that I love, plenty of warm things as well as summer and going out clothes; a very small amount- that drawer wasn’t even half full- but that I really love.  I have so few clothes compared to a year or two ago, yet I am infinitely more satisfied with my wardrobe (drawer).

I am excited, I am happy and I absolutely can’t wait to get to beautiful, beautiful India!

Lots of love to everyone, and special greetings to readers in India!
xxx

PS on the way home from Norfolk on Friday (while I was in the loo unfortunately) my husband saw Stewart Lee in the garage and was able to shake his hand and tell him how much he loves his stuff.  Then for our party night last night (for our last night on the boat) we spent most of the evening watching Stuart Lee on YouTube.  There is zero chance of him reading this, but if he is, we love you!