The crash that follows too much seeking. I don’t eat Dairy Milk anymore (think of the cows). And the Farrow and Ball painted room looked horrible.
In Praise of Magnolia and In Praise of PMS (first published July 2014)
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).
Like coming off a motorway and finding yourself suddenly in a 30mph zone, leaving the demands, mental stimulation, pressures and deadlines of my job was bound to be an adjustment. But it’s also forced me to face up to myself, unshielded from the work role, my thoughts and feelings no longer subsumed beneath the something else that is career.
Also, I like to get things done, or rather, I like things to be done so I write lists and worry about doing things, even if I don’t always get around to getting that much done. I feel an urge to have things done as soon as possible, even if I don’t usually have the wherewithal or motivation to actually do them. Plus, in the heat, you are lucky if you get one thing done a day.
So here I am, in paradise, worrying about getting things done. The most important thing is the writing, so I’ll talk about that. Obviously I have this blog, and that kind of takes care of itself. I write when I have something to say, and post when it is finished. In between I try, and mostly succeed, to not worry about it too much. On top of that, I am writing a book with my husband about how we got here (decluttering, shedding attachments, mental leaps and matrix obstacles) and about what happens and what we learn about ourselves during our year in South East Asia. So far so good, right?
We get up early, have a walk on the beach before it gets too hot, then retreat to the veranda/indoors until the evening, with the exception of possibly going out for lunch (which I managed yesterday, my first eaten-in-India masala dosa!) or to get snacks. So plenty of time for writing, except that the heat slows everything down, plus I have only just got better from being ill. But the biggest obstacle to it all, as usual, is my own mind.
I’ve been putting myself under pressure, thinking I have to write this book, try and get it published, finish chapter one as soon as I can so we can get onto chapter two about being in India before we’ve been here too long and forgotten things… Thinking I have to make it a success, to fulfill the destiny of this adventure, to justify it, and to secure us financially. So no pressure there then. No wonder writing chapter one began to feel like a chore. This demonstrates what a brain can do: cause anxiety about nothing, when one is ensconced in paradise with nothing at all to worry about.
So after a grounding chat with my husband over breakfast this morning, this is where I am at now: We have a boat to come back to in the UK, overheads are low so we both only need to work maybe three days a week each, I can sign up to agencies and just do whatever, a variety, so as not to get sucked back into the workplace matrix/politics. That plan is fine. As for this year, this is budgeted for, so I do not need to earn any money or worry about earning any money this year. I can just… wait for it… relax and enjoy myself. And write. Write for fun, write when I want to, write how and what I want. Write the book, write the blog. Write without expectation or pressure. Write nothing at all some days.
But mostly I will write, of course. As Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love, my long time personal bible) says, having a creative mind is like having a border collie for a pet. If you don’t give it something to do, it will find itself something, and you may not like what it finds. (This is probably why I have OCD, anxiety, etc etc etc. There’s no easy answer though, because even when I do keep my mind occupied with writing, I am still capable of getting anxious about that.)
And of course I am still processing what it all means: Selling the house, packing in my career, abandoning everything and just going off… It’s not about going travelling, not really. Or rather, the travelling is a tool. It gets me away, breaks me away from my old life, from family, and when I return I will be living in a new area quite far away, far enough that no family will ever come and visit probably.
It’s not as if my family was bad. It’s not as if my life was bad. In fact it was good by any standard, and way, way better than I would have envisioned as a suicidal teenager or a freakish, teased child. But, and here’s the but: It wasn’t really me, or it wasn’t me any more, and the only way I could be me was to get right away from my family; to do something so big and so different that I would become unrecognisable, to them and even to myself.
My husband took two Tuk Tuk rides to find a pharmacy for me, and came back with strong antibiotics, gut flora and my thyroid meds, all over the counter, for around £5 altogether. I started feeling better from the first tablet. Antibiotics are good and strong here, I think. My doctor in the UK could only give me three months’ worth of thyroid medication, so I have to buy it while I am out here. I have a laminated copy of my prescription to keep with my UK issued meds (which are labelled with my name), to show when entering countries, especially Thailand. I will keep my UK prescription meds for customs and buy and use local meds when I am inside a country for any length of time.
After drinking ginger, lemon and honey tea, and toast and honey whilst I was ill, now I am better, I am on ginger and hot water, mint tea, normal black tea, no honey or sugar in tea, no honey on toast, back to being a proper vegan and to taking care of my teeth.
My capabilities are returning: I have gone from unable to even think about moving and the journey to Hampi, to talking about Vietnam, Japan, the whole trip. I am inconsistent, emotional. Yesterday evening we went out to dinner at a local, simpler place and had a good talk and reconnected. Talking about capabilities, fears, managing my boom and bust cycle.
So it’s good, we are staying here until Saturday night, almost another week (so two weeks in Goa altogether- twelve nights in Agonda, eleven at this particular high up hut), so I can fully recuperate, get my strength back, and write chapter one (but in a joyful, no pressure kind of way, obviously!).
What I have been reading:
Only one thing, Kim Gordon’s (from Sonic Youth) autobiography. My favourite bits, paraphrased: I wanted to be an artist since I was five. If you track back/observe you can see what it is you are meant to be doing. (Visual) artists bemoaning that they can’t produce a piece of art that has the impact of a Kinks song. A lot of artists wish they could produce work that had as much impact as a good song. I don’t have the answer to that.
What I have been watching:
Only one thing, “Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise” on Netflix
On Saturday morning I was the body for my husband giving a massage lesson (I know, it’s a hard life…) As I listened to him patiently and professionally deliver a one hour comprehensive introduction lesson to a complete beginner, that was pitched just right, that created just the right atmosphere, and that in the time available, did everything it could; I reflected that wow, we know stuff. We know stuff because we have been around for a while, learning stuff. Because we are older.
I have spent such a lot of time thinking about what I don’t know and what I can’t do, that this weekend it was really nice to spend a bit of time thinking about what I do know and what I can do. I used to think I wasn’t very well read because I compared myself with Oxbridge educated Guardian journalists. But the other day I casually mentioned Rebecca (by Daphne Du Maurier, a book and films) in a big work meeting and no one had heard of it. No one. I was surprised; I didn’t think any less of the people, I just thought, okay, my reality is different to what I thought.
At work on Friday, someone was talking about starting yoga, and about how the teacher had talked to them about the chakras. I found myself talking a bit about them, and sending a link to a page so she could learn more. I don’t really do spiritual/chakra stuff anymore, but for a while I was pretty into it. Focusing on the different chakra points, their colours, their corresponding mental, psychological and physical aspects, is a very powerful tool for self healing and development. I used to think: Root Chakra (red) safety, security; Sacral Chakra (orange) drives, creativity; Solar Plexus Chakra (yellow) emotions; Heart Chakra (green) love; Throat Chakra (blue) self expression, communication with myself and others; Third Eye Chakra (indigo) direction and seeing my path; Crown Chakra (violet white) connection with above.
So I thought, be proud of what you know, not sad re getting old.
Of course, there are loads of things I don’t know, loads of things I haven’t learned, loads of things I have refused to learn, e.g. DIY and reverse parking. I feel totally okay about that. The longer you live the more things you find out about or hear about, so the list of things you don’t know how to do keeps on growing, even as you keep learning, because you can’t learn how to do everything you come across. You have to specialise. (Rather than feel bad about the things you don’t know about.) Knowing things, being good at things, takes time, energy and devotion. (I want to learn a bit of Hindi. So far I know about 5 words, and that’s only if I keep looking at them every day.)
I thought about what’s good about getting older, which is actually what’s good about me as I get older. And as I am older, I could just simplify that to say: What’s good about me. (Making this list was nice. I recommend it as an exercise in compassion and a little pick me up!):
What’s good about me
I have no inhibitions about my body
Yesterday I stripped off in front of someone I have only just met and lay on the massage table feeling fine with nothing on except my knickers.
I am sexually liberated
I had kind of a thing recently with a woman, and we can see each other and it is all fine, no issues.
I can say what I want in bed.
(in both senses of the meaning)
Sex just keeps on getting better and better.
That’s what no one tells twenty somethings. If you are in a loving communicating relationship, sex just keeps on getting better and better, in new and surprising ways!
I know: your art is the most important thing
More important than alcohol, socialising, FOMO, peer pressure, or any other ephemeral distractions. Your art is what makes you you. By honouring your art, you honour yourself. By spending time with your art, you spend time with yourself. By getting to know your art you get to know yourself.
I understand: ‘The matrix’ is really just your own thoughts limiting you
Re bands and art, you have to want it, and you have to stick with it, for ever if need be, enjoying the process not just aiming for the rewards of fame etc. If you are in a band you either all have to want it, or you have to be single minded enough to drive it yourself with interchangeable musicians.
It is a myth that it is too hard to make it. Like Charlie Higson said about writing, there’s no magic trick or secret doorway, if you are good you will be picked up. There’s so few people who can stick at anything, look at new year’s resolutions, diets, exercise regimes. All you have to do is stick at it, and want it, want it enough to stick at it (1% inspiration, 99% perspiration), despite all the matrix pressure to ‘be realistic’, etc etc.
In fact the only thing people can stick at is what the matrix wants them to stick at, the everyday drudgery, the oh hi, another day another dollar, oh well, maybe I will win the lottery, soon be the weekend, I have a holiday to to look forward to, or oh look a charity jeans day or a Christmas jumper day, just enough to make it seem not too bad and everyone’s doing it so it must be okay right?
And every now and again they’ll scare you, a round of redundancies, or a crisis that causes stress so you take the whole thing even more seriously, you stay late, you give up the hobby class and exercise routine, or worse you never eat or sleep properly, you’re always at work, always unhealthy… and for what, not for personal freedom that’s for sure.
So the lesson is: Look at what the herd is doing and do the opposite. Look at what the herd believes and believe the opposite. As Jon Rappoport says, in this consensus reality we live in, the limits we see there aren’t real. I can be a writer. I am a writer. Or rather, I am a ……… as yet to be labelled…….. and I document it on my blog. But let’s get away from labels altogether. If we aren’t labelling, if we aren’t preoccupied with what people do for a living (the herd again), then we don’t need to say anything. I can just say, in answer to what do you do, I am a human, I live. (And I document it on my blog)
I have set up an Instagram account for when I am away followingthebrownrabbit
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 10: Every Day Healing
Going through boxes as part of getting ready to move, old photos of me as a child- how terribly sad I looked at ten, better a bit later. My school books, I threw out. My son’s, I kept. My mum’s CV- travelled the world hitchhiking alone in 1968, all sorts of different community projects, renovating a derelict house singlehanded with two young children. My grandmother’s travel diary from when she took me as a sulky fifteen year old to Italy. Photographs of me in dresses my other grandmother made. A note from my grandmother after my grandfather died, ‘from grandpa with his deep love for you’.
Ancestors give you stuff; they pass on their attributes, and their weaknesses, they give you experiences, they show you how to be, as well as how not to be. They invest in you, give their love and time and attention, but the fruits of their labours may only fully blossom and then ripen once they and most of their things are long gone.
My mother’s mother commented on others’ lives right up to the end. She tried to control my mum’s life, or at least she commented on it, right up until she died, by which time my mum was in her sixties. Right up to the last months of her life she would tell me I was fat, in front of visitors and other family members. My mum doesn’t say anything directly to me, which is an improvement. And if I can learn not to tell my son what to do with his life and not talk about him behind his back, then that will have improved things even more. (Don’t tell my son how to live his life- this includes indirect references to things that could be construed as, or actually are, unsolicited advice- telling him about the Hare Krishna mantra was borderline at best.)
I used to just have guilt around my mother and my son, then I learned to have a little bit of anger as well, to be able to say aloud (or at least, to write down): bringing up my son was very difficult, I had a difficult child to bring up. (He was brought up by a teenage mother who didn’t know what she was doing, so he probably has loads of anger too, but that is for him, not me.) Into and throughout my adult life, I have had a mother who has very strong opinions and judgements about most things, especially men. It’s not so much the views themselves, but how stridently they are held, so that it’s hard to be free to be yourself. Myself.Funny how that’s hard to write. (But it’s not about her needing to do anything or that she should do anything- it’s for me to do the work, it’s for me to set myself free, to be free, and just do whatever I want without defending or justifying myself).
Emotions to deal with: anger: access and make friends with it, enjoy allowing myself to feel it and then let go, but I can’t let go until I stop repressing it. I could even be angry with my younger self, instead of always being so compassionate, poor her, etc. etc. You could have done so much, you were hot, you were powerful; you silly stubborn thing, determined to be miserable! I am perfectly happy now, but I am just saying; Wow, you made it hard for yourself/us!
Maybe instead of guilt being my default response to everything I could experiment with other things, like anger, like hedonism, like self care comes first, for example.
I hardly EVER go in record shops but I was with a friend who collects vinyl so we went in one, and there in front of me was a Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy poster. I thought it was an original old one, I didn’t realise it was advertising a 30 year anniversary tour. If I’d said anything out loud the record shop man or my friend might have realised I was confused and put me right, but I didn’t. Thirty years ago I was fifteen and so desperate to see them, I was at boarding school and not allowed out. A boy in my year went, his dad made an excuse so he could go, I was so jealous. They played for fifteen minutes with their backs to the audience and walked off but still, it had been one of life’s big regrets. But luckily for me the universe gave me another chance. A few weeks later a patient asked to go to a concert-this is a fairly unusual request- and I also fairly unusually offered to get involved and look up local gig programmes… I looked up the UEA programme and there it was, Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy 30 year anniversary tour £25.
Oh, thank you, thank you, so much pleasure. I went on my own to just soak it all up. A sound bath; the lights red with gun like firing of individual white lights, a wall of dry ice lit white, almost all the stage eclipsed. Seeing mosh pit kids, a girl with dark hair, her face lit up with happiness. Images on the screen, a serious, sad looking girl (me, at fifteen, thirty years ago) and then at the end a pair of infrared heat image hands, (me now, healing hands). I don’t want anything to come between me and this awareness. The bar tender gives me free sparkling water, a man gives me a token for free car parking. You don’t need to ask for help to make your path, you have created this life, and it is perfect.
On healing… I don’t believe in spirit guides or anything like that, not for me anyway, they may well be true for other people. I’ve been doing it a while now, and with experience comes confidence that it will come, and so it comes… I only have to think about healing, or raise my hands above a person and they heat up. I relax and tune in to all that feeling, and concentrate my mind and energies on giving healing- just thinking that that is what I am doing is enough really, and then just staying in focus. I start with resting hands lightly on shoulders, then go over the chakras, then back to the shoulders. And, often, bliss: like being ensconced in a bubble of love, feet swaying, body swaying, dizzy, feels almost the same getting it as giving it, except when giving I stay in focus that that is what I am doing. I see green light sometimes. A lovely warm feeling, purposeful, like I know what I am here for.
Healing a woman who said she felt as if she had stress in every area of her life, but was ‘trying to think positive as there’s other people worse off’ (i.e. telling herself off for feeling bad). I think trying to be positive when you don’t feel it is self invalidating and can cause more suffering and I also think the message has been corrupted; it’s more about remaining intact, having faith no matter what, not being happy no matter what. It’s like how people have interpreted mindfulness to be stopping all your thoughts- which my counsellor says is nonsense.
I am finding my own opinions, my own way of doing things. My own levels of healing: I had met John as I started to heal, more stuff came up, re childhood stuff, I dealt with that and moved on. Later, more stuff came up, I began counselling, and as I am healed, I become a better healer. I am a stronger healer for having gotten better (lately got really strong, same time as the counselling?
My teacher said, ‘this is Sadie, she is a very powerful healer.’ I remember her saying a while back, you have to sort yourself out first, i.e. before you become a healer, well yes, to a certain extent but then the healing helps you to further heal, in ways you may not have identified without embarking on it (like art therapy and having to have your own psychotherapy along the way as part of it). It’s perfectly natural really that it should be this way.
Practiced healing on Kim after yoga. She is a healer and I worried, what if she doesn’t feel anything, but afterwards she said it was the strongest energy she had ever felt from a healer. She doesn’t work full time, each morning she does chi gung and meditates and sends healing to people- goes through their bodies, sometimes does an hour as she has time and it made me realise, it validated: This stuff is important, even though work is the thing that pays the bills, or, the fact that work pays the bills doesn’t mean it is the central thing of value in your life. Meditation and healing are the pivotal things around which life can revolve (this concept of pivots etc comes up a lot in yoga). Build my life outside of work, invest in these things, and they will invest in me/all will be well.
Did healing on John- he said my hands felt so hot he could feel the heat off my hand which was on his chest, he could feel the heat on his throat, under chin, and when my hands were on his shoulders he could feel it all through his body.
At work I saw someone at lunch that I hadn’t seen for ages. I think it was to show me that I am different now. Sometimes you only notice by encountering a person or situation from past and finding that you respond differently and feel different. I noticed the way he seemed so supportive yet it is just business; the way he criticised people I liked, the way he gave me advice… And I realised, I don’t need your advice and support, I have outgrown you. I am not that anxious awkward person in awe of having dinner at the Premier Inn with people from head office. I am capable and confident.
Everyday gratitude:
Swimming pool empty and friendly- two people talked to me.
Car park almost full, spaces looked a bit tight for me but then I find two spaces next to each other and what was more, one also had a space in front of it so I could drive straight through to be facing ready to go.
Two staff at the whole foods shop, astonishingly friendly, talking at length about their cats.
Driving home in the dark, I noticed the pretty pointy silhouette of a chapel, a beautifully illuminated pink neon No Vacancies sign and a pretty yellow window lit up.
A meeting got postponed so I only have to do one report not two this week.
The secretaries next door offering me biscuits just as I was getting hungry at 4pm.
All falling into place ‘live life as though everything is rigged in your favour.’
Sitting on floor, stapling papers, staples ran out and I remembered I’d found a little chunk of staples the day before and put them by my computer just within arm’s reach.
A member of staff I don’t know being extra nice and friendly, like the staff in the whole foods shop.
Finding some extra pouches of cat food so I don’t need to go shopping today.
Home, stars, little walk.
My stepdaughter saying ‘let’s go home and have hot dogs* and watch Buffy on the sofa with blankets and one cat each, what more could we want?’ *vegetarian ones
Someone at work introducing me: ‘this woman is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and you can tell by looking at her that she is just like this at home too’.
Someone else saying that I have the happiest team in the hospital.
One of my staff bought me a posh houseplant ‘because you’d been having a hard time recently, I wanted to give you something happy.’
A moment shared with a member of staff on her last day. ‘As you go up the ranks it can be, ‘Lonely’’, we both said at the same time.
After going to a friend’s party, John saying, that’s the most relaxed I’ve seen you in company, even making jokes!
An old friend asking, are you still writing and me saying yes, he said I’m glad and me asking, are you still drawing and him saying yes, but it’s just a hobby, I’ve accepted that and me saying me too (except I haven’t, not really).
Massage today, didn’t have the surface niggles, so went deeper.
I ‘woke up’ on the massage table, hair everywhere, enlivened, thinking, what if I just arrived here, what would I observe about myself? I am hungry for good healthy food, I have a nice job, Iam a healer in training, I am married,I have an adult son and two step children, I drive around a lot and go away with work no problem, Isleep well, I exist separately to my thoughts.
I get up early in the morning, compared with John anyway, who gets up half an hour before he needs to leave, I allow about an hour and a half or two hours. Partly because I faff around a lot and also this year I have been meditating but the real reason I like this time is that now and again I will have a little treat: I will put the internet on and check my emails or I will sit at the bottom of the stairs and read for five minutes or I will do a little sorting out job, something that I wouldn’t normally do in the morning before I leave for work. I had one of those moments looking at my bookshelf. John’s sister was coming to stay with her friend and spiritual guru so I had been getting the room ready. I started thinking about books and the bookshelf as it is in the spare room. I thought first about if I had anything to lend John’s sister, and then I thought about if they looked through the books on the bookshelf, and wondered if I should put them in any sort of order.
I looked at them impassively, as an outsider would, and this is what I saw: John’s books, sci fi, psychedelic, spiritual novels, and mine: New Zealand literature and creative writing books; a set of women’s erotica, all containing a short story written by me; Eat Pray Love, various other spiritual journey books, all mixed up and mixed in with Lace (from when I was 11 or 12, not the original copy, although it looks like it, old and battered. I can still remember the woman being fingered and brought to orgasm in the cellar, whilst wearing a primrose suit). Princess Daisy, ditto, loved for the hot lesbian scene; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Goodbye Mog by Judith Kerr, and The Fault in my Stars. All the books I have listed are my favourites. If that paints a picture of me, I feel it is strangely accurate. Looking at myself reflected back to me via the medium of my bookshelf was a thoughtful and nice experience, a concrete illustration of my eclecticness. That I am made up of a lot of different things that are strangely synthesised into something pretty. I like the way the bookcase is, I am happy for people to look at it.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 9 Discernment
Last night
Two episodes of House of Cards and then he puts my hand on his trousers and we have sex on the couch and I swear it was exactly like being on MDMA but with no side effects, no horrible head fucking thoughts. It felt like being in a film, so turned on it was surreal, happy MDMA-type tears, eyes watering by themselves. I said afterwards, ‘I went somewhere else’. The light, the room, juddering and flicking from side to side like it does when you’ve taken a ton of MDMA and him going up the stairs to bed saying what we were both thinking, ‘Who needs drugs’. We haven’t spoken about it since but oh my God, proof of everything, if we needed it.
We’d spent most of 2015 completely straight: no drugs, no alcohol, I had also given up caffeine, John had also given up sugar. And then the Buddhism wore off…
But at its height it (Buddhism) felt ironically like being on drugs (high after class, the air cool and warm at the same time). We both realised it was over at the same time. We were standing in the kitchen by the backdoor and both realised we didn’t want to do the next class after all (we had planned to do the year long foundation course). John said, we burn through things quickly now don’t we? I had just bought him all this Buddhist stuff (we still have a Buddha in almost every room of the house) but neither of us were offended about the other suddenly going off it.
Shortly afterwards I went out to dinner with a friend and tried to explain, referencing Krishnamurti (don’t follow anyone) and John and Yoko (I don’t believe in magic, mantra, etc.)
‘It sounds like you’ve gone through some kind of enlightenment,’ she said and then asked, ‘are you still vegetarian?’
I was puzzled, thinking, it’s not that I’ve given up on awareness, and once you have it you have it.
Suddenly it just seemed pointless, the rigid no drinking at all, no caffeine, even the Buddhist teacher had said it doesn’t necessarily mean no wine can pass your lips, it’s just about not being intoxicated. It’s a barrier between me and friends who drink, so I decided that the day we went to another friend’s I would have a coffee and some wine. We made dinner while we got a bit drunk and we couldn’t mash the potatoes because they were still raw and it was all a bit chaotic for a bit. Maybe just one glass of wine is good for me now. And then when I went out the other night with friends I had a glass of wine, felt better re barriers, they were drunk, and we all got on really well, and I felt really relaxed.
So how does that lead onto MDMA? The MDMA is me, wanting that again, we both were, but now he is talking about never doing it again, maybe we just needed to remind ourselves we can if we like, maybe. Or just remind ourselves what it is like, the good and the bad- 3 or 4 days recovery. No music, singing along to YouTube, lying paralysed, naked and sweating. Marrying you was the best thing I ever did with my life. Or for my life: it gives me all this freedom, and it gives me excitement and bad boy tendencies without the angst and drama that wrecks and destabilises lives.
MDMA is like a searchlight, but this time at last there was nothing to find, we lay in each other’s arms on the couch, for an extended period with no tv, film or music, just us, talking, and aside from a bit of smutty sharing of sexual fantasies, there were no surprises, no dark secrets or hidden longings to discuss, no marriage, no children, no family secrets, no adolescent incidents of previously paralysing shame to heal…. It wasn’t boring by any means: it was wonderful, that we could be so free, relaxed and spacious, but at the same time, have we reached a clearing, a clear place? So maybe we can give it up now? Certainly, we have had sex sober that was every bit as amazing as sex on MDMA, and with us both entirely present in every way, from the cerebral to the mundane to the spiritual to the tantric ecstatic.
We said at the time, we should make time for this: lying together, smelling each other, just love, no conversations re kids etc., and if you can have a spiritual drug free rave and get high with strangers and no drugs, surelyweshould be able to do it alone in our house?
Well I guess we already did, last night. Sometimes you have an idea and realise you’ve already executed it, like life or the forces of life were faster than your ideas and imagination, which I guess is often or maybe always the case but doesn’t always get realised….
Christmas 2015: slacking off re caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol and drugs and then realising I actually prefer life as it was: getting stoned really stoned once or twice after not doing it is great, and sex was amazing, but doing it every nights for four nights, it wears thin, and leads to eating chocolate, and being sluggish next day, sleeping in and being too lazy to do exercise. I prefer walking and doing yoga every day with the occasional blow out. It’s the same re the internet and facebook, food, shopping and time- discernment and awareness is the key.
Christmas
Thinking about what it would take for me to enjoy it- what do I enjoy that could be done at Christmas?
Things I enjoy or that make me feel good that with some effort, dedication and single mindedness I can do in spite of Christmas: a Yoga class on YouTube, an hour long walk, eating healthy-ish, even doing a bit of writing- just a snatched half an hour while everyone goes out (this is probably not even so much about the writing but about having a little oasis of alone time during the festivities)
Things I like about Christmas that go on anyway and I can just join in with: not going to work Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, drinking Baileys at any time of day, staying up late watching films with my step son, sleeping in, eating whenever and whatever I like(contradicts previous bit I know!)
Funny things such as realising for what seems like the first time, why people/a person/me might enjoy Christmas: the change of routine, the party atmosphere, the laying around, drinking, not having to go to work, holidays. Ignore the shopping and the stress and the religiosity/consumerism debates, the hand wringing, the sad stories and the stress. Just look at the lights and think of chocolate.
(I haven’t written any Christmas cards, nor did I last year, and possibly the year before. I used to make them all by hand and deliver them on foot!)
‘The family that I have chosen’, I said on Boxing Day when I crashed through the door, falling on the couch with a bottle of Baileys and all family visits done.
Friendship
Looking through my old, much scribbled in address book at all the names that are no longer a part of my life; old landlords, hairdressers, work contacts, book clubs I am no longer in, people who have died, people I have lost touch with, people I never really was in touch with… Hopeful contacts, someone I met at work that I thought might have become a friend. People I’d met through work who once the work finished I never saw. People who I had been to their house once: a mum at the school, who invited me to her house for lunch, she cooked lasagne, we saw each other now and again but didn’t really become close. The doctor from work who invited me and my boyfriend for dinner with her lawyer husband in their huge barn conversion. We were too in awe to return the invitation. Some relationships hopeful, some forced, some I wonder about calling, I think they would be happy to see me, but wonder if we really have anything still, or maybe just feeling awkward that it’s been so long. Others I know I will not call- it never was anything, and I am happy to let them go. And some of course long standing friends that I am still in touch with even after all these years.
The point of all this rambling and reflection is that I have always had some difficulties/concerns around friendships- namely, that I haven’t got enough, that I don’t call people enough (although actually with the exception of one or two people I don’t think any of them ever call me), and I often don’t feel myself with them. Or that I don’t know what sort of friends are me, or that I want. Because I haven’t known who I am, how can I expect to know what friends I should have? And how can I expect other people to know me when I don’t know myself?
Looking back I have felt so awkward with a lot of these people, it’s surprising we are still friends. When I lived in a council flat I felt awkward just going to anyone’s who had a reasonable house. I overcompensated: when I was in a middle class book club in Norwich I remember one night it was my turn to host it at my flat. Only one person came, and there was all this cheese, I must have spent twenty pounds on cheese alone. I understand now that my attitude must have created something of a barrier. But I also think that maybe I have struggled to meet people who I really click with because I haven’t really clicked with myself.
One of the side effects of a spiritual awakening is loneliness within your friendships. I don’t need to talk about it anymore, but I needed to when it was first happening to me. I told one friend that it felt like a miracle, meeting John, and she said yes, I think it is a miracle, which was nice. Several friends read my book, and put up with me. But still, it’s not the same when your friends are not going through the same thing and I often felt worse for trying to explain what was happening as I just sounded crazy. Nowadays I have a few people I can talk to, as they have discovered it since and some have come to me or come into my life and talked about it, but back then it was only me, and John. Not that I want to be with the really ‘out there’ people either- I want the down to earth. Which is why it was so nice at Yoga, the healing, with Kim and Melinda, feeling instantly comfortable, they are both down to earth and into healing. They don’t wear robes or anything, are not false or pretentious or over the top. I don’t need to find people that believe in exactly the same things, I just need people who have an awareness of something else, but in a genuine, quiet way, not in a provocative or statement way.
It’s well reported on that during or in a spiritual journey it can be lonely; you can feel disconnected from your friends, you can even feel critical of them, of their negativity, of their asleep ness, of the fact that they don’t have a spiritual practice and of the fact that they don’t ‘get you’. But aside from the advice of the Dali Lama which is that it is more useful to identify a single shortcoming in yourself than a hundred in others, which I will endeavour to remember, your friends have every right to feel at least as disappointed in you as you do in them, after all, they haven’t done anything wrong, they haven’t changed. You, on the other hand, could be seen to have to a certain extent abandoned them.
Sometimes I visit a good friend and feel distant, unable to connect. I feel more connected with a person I just met on my yoga class and the thought flits through my mind of abandoning all my friends and making new ones.
Sometimes I just have my usual old problem of not really planning or living my days according to my needs: I make a list of friends like a to do list, contact everyone, do loads of visiting, regret the time alone I lost. (I have read since that as your vibration level rises, or your frequency rises, friends do sometimes fall away. Also, that you don’t desire to see people as much, and need more time alone.)
Other times I visit an old friend, feel relaxed and connected, talk about all sorts of things including politics (her topic) and healing (mine). I maybe meet her halfway by raising politics (a subject I normally avoid like the plague) re getting active with food cycle, and she maybe meets me halfway by having healing, getting into it and talking about feeling a spiritual shift.
This ‘process’ I am going through is having a cleansing and purifying effect; spring cleaning me, applying search and destroy, finding residual issues to work on. ‘It’ works in a different way to worry, where the mind skates around, looking for things, real and imaginary, to worry about. This works on an unconscious level so that, for example, when I need to work on my thoughts, I pick up a book and open it at the ‘thought lab’ page containing everyday thought exercises. I keep it open there for weeks, and when I do pick it up to look at other exercises, all the other things I find are so totally not me that I scurry back to the thought lab page and leave it open there in the bathroom for another few weeks.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 8: Big Magic
I read Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s book Big Magic, about creativity. In it she mentions ‘those dreams where you dream you suddenly find another room or rooms in your house that you didn’t know you had’, and I thought, really, that’s a thing? I have those dreams regularly. I usually dream about the same flat, not one I have ever had in real life, but in my dreams I return to the same one over and over. It’s one of those old terraced houses divided into flats; messy, lots of other flats around. Each time I dream it, I rediscover a whole other set of rooms that are a bit neglected and that I have simply forgotten about. In the dream I wonder what to do with them, which room to sleep in, what to use the rooms for; I suddenly have all this extra space I don’t know what to do with.
I also have other dreams, where I open a bag of rubbish or I open a drawer and it’s filled with old cat food tins that haven’t been washed and have gone off and are filled with maggots. I have to somehow make myself quickly pick them up and get rid of them without looking at them otherwise I would be unable to do it. And I’ve let all the other rubbish pile up as well, I can’t understand it, the cat food tins or the rubbish, and I am appalled.
In real life I can let my car get very messy, tissues, wrappers, dust and stones. I am somewhat ashamed even though I still do it. So I thought the dream was about that, that I was ashamed of myself.
Worse still, I sometimes dream about caged animals that I have forgotten to look after, that I somehow inexplicably forgotten I had and that are mercifully still alive despite no food or water. I thought all these dreams were about shame, or at the very least, clattiness.
So when I continued reading and Elizabeth Gilbert went on to say that those dreams are all about ‘expansivenessand your life having more possibilities than you previously realised’, that was very pleasing to me. Especially as this was exactlywhat I had been feeling: the evening before I had gone out for dinner with two people that used to work in my team, young women on their first jobs, with me the manager of the team and their supervisor. I had the sweet and rare experience of hearing about what I was like (it had echoes of a child asking its mother what was I like tell me what I was like when I was little…) That was a few years ago so I have probably changed a lot but still, no one really tells you what you are like, you can only guess.
When I said that I thought that senior management preferred a man in my team to me because he’s always the same, always unemotional, always smartly dressed, and his car is neat and clean and mine is always messy they looked horrified. Your leadership, your direction, your care, you’re amazing how you get it all done, we were so lucky we had you for support, they both said. They reminded me of all the different tasks I do and the skills I have, and said that if I ever wanted or needed another job I’d have no problem getting one with the agency they work for. The agency pays more so I could work less hours. Listening to them, I felt all the possibilities, being able to do healing as well, expansiveness… When I used to just think about all the bad stuff- I am messy, senior management probably disapprove of me, without realising, I actually have skills! One of the women invited me to visit her in Sweden, a genuine invite, and hearing about her life there, how she’d moved there from Suffolk, was so interesting and inspiring and made it sound so easy. It made it sound so easy to change your life.
On a more down to earth level, it took away my fear of redundancy, knowing there are plenty of jobs and the world is more than just my current workplace. It’s such an amazing gift, the gift of peace of mind, and a sign that I am in tune with the universe.
I realised I had it wrong: those dreams weren’t about my clattiness or my buried shames, they were about the hithererto unknown expansiveness and potential of my own life. I have nothing to be ashamed of. At worst, the unfed animals were a gentle chide or reminder about my sometimes neglected creative work…
Because although I am where I want to be writing wise anyway really, in terms of where I was this time last year and where I am now, undoubtedly I am an inconsistent and unfaithful bride to creativity. I certainly don’t have Liz Gilbert’s dedication and approach; I have other things, true, an absorbing career which is practically a vocation- can you have two vocations, can you have them at the same time? I suppose so, look at Nick Hornby and countless others.
This time last year (Christmas), I did a little review of life and I had an idea for something to write this year. Then I got waylaid in Buddhism and other seeking and beyond seeking, even considering that writing was behind me along with all the different religions I had burned through, because, I had decided: I am to cease all seeking behaviour, and writing is a seeking behaviour. And maybe it was, maybe it is, but isn’t talking, isn’t breathing, isn’t yoga, and who makes up the rules anyway?
Still, in spite of leaving it (the writing) for a month, three months, I still had a word document, two notebooks and many pieces of paper, including for some reason, notes in my makeup basket, enough to retype fairly straightforwardly into another little ‘My Spiritual Journey’ book- is this a genre? (Look up- Yes: It’s called ‘Spiritual memoir’).
On Writing, I tell myself, re this book- ‘you don’t need to find out anymore’ (she says, famously having said that before) ‘just write down what you have found already’.
So I ended up in a place I am happy to be in. If I worked my guts out I could maybe have something complete in a few weeks- or at least it feels like that anyway- which is where I’d have been if I had been more consistent- but I never am consistent- which brings me back to Liz- do I need to make a commitment, hold a ceremony and dedicate myself to writing? Or do I just commit to completing this project by writing it every day or almost every day, until it is done? Because I don’t have Liz’s stubborn consistent determination I get or got distracted by my spiritual quest. Maybe now that (my spiritual quest) is done (or so I think right now) I can concentrate on writing. I don’t do facebook or watch television, but because I have the career, and the healing, am I dissipated? Should I just focus on one thing and see what happens if I don’t ‘dissipate my energies’? But I am talking nonsense of course- I have to work, even she (Liz G) advises it, and I can’t type all the time anyway, it makes my hand ache. There’s time enough for everything.
The thing that got me writing again after I had abandoned it, was writing a spoken word piece for a friend’s 50th Birthday. She said it could be about anything, so I wrote a ‘my spiritual journey’ thing, the only thing I felt able to write about. I wrote it while listening to Rufus Wainright’s song Go or go aheadon repeat,which he wrote after a crystal meth binge.
Liz G says creative inspiration can either come in a skin tingling rush or it can be quiet and you just get there by following your curiosity and clues and it leads you there. Or it can be like this… I read a book, it mentioned a dream, I listen to a song at just the right moment, I recall a dream, I write it down. And now I am in such a clear eyed clear minded place, isn’t this the perfect place from which to write a book?
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 7: Buddhism
Throughout January and February I meditated almost every morning with the Hare Krishna mantra, following the visit to the temple on New Year’s Eve. The advantage of this mantra is that even if you get distracted, even if your mind wanders whilst you are doing it, as long as you keep saying it, you are still doing it; and what you are doing is chanting God’s name. I was too worried about the neighbours and self conscious about my own voice to chant aloud so I did it in my head, which probably doesn’t help with distraction as if you say it aloud, enunciating each syllable clearly, it is more to hang onto. But still, I credit the Hare Krishna mantra with the purification and development I experienced during these two months: my counselling, working on my OCD, maybe even John getting into Buddhism and us giving up drugs for the best part of a year, who knows, a lot happened from those two months.
In March John started a course in Buddhism, bringing home information sheets to read which I fell on and read each week and we discussed them in preparation for the next week. They advise don’t start with meditation, as most people do, me included, instead start with the theory and the ethics, then do the meditation, because then you have a framework. I look back to how crazy I was when I first started meditating, and realise this makes sense. So on John’s course they didn’t get onto meditation until later, but as they did, I started doing it too. I switched from the Hare Krishna mantra to Buddhist meditation, one day Metta Bhavna and the other day mindfulness of breathing.
Breathing:
Focus on the breath not the breathing, as you follow it, it quietens and disappears, so you think, what am I following, and then, I’m not breathing, I’d better breathe, and then you are focussing on the act of breathing not on following the breath which you are doing consciously, so you are doing two things at once, actively breathing, and following the breath, which doesn’t work. So you have to let go, and let the breath be as it is, sometimes big and fast and gasping, sometimes so faint you can hardly find it, and sometimes disappeared or stopped altogether, but you have to trust your body will take care of breathing when and as it needs to.
I started a different Buddhism course a bit later, each week we were given homework, such as The Four Winds (Loss and Gain, Pain and Pleasure, Praise and Blame, Fame and Obscurity): We were told to pick a pair and focus on that for the week. I focussed on Loss and Gain, or how I specifically in my life seek to avoid loss and sought to gain: thinking about mine and other’s air time in conversations; wanting to be asked questions, wanting to ask questions but not asking them, also like praise and blame or fame and obscurity, at my mum’s seeing an old family friend, I wanted to say, look at me, look what I am, look what I’m into, but he just wanted to talk about old age, house prices, people I don’t know, and although he seemed pleased to see me, he was not interested in any of the things I was interested in, and even poured cold water in my plans, (I felt) and I came home in a bad mood.
But it did have a positive effect, the Buddhism course(s):
Before work, John and me had one of those hugs that are really close, well almost all of the hugs he gives me are like that, where he folds me in really tight, and I put my hand on the base of his neck, in between the shoulder blades, where it always feels hot for me, a healing point/love point, and it felt really good, the hug, and I said, ‘things are good’ and he said, ‘yeah, things are good’, and I said, although I didn’t need to, ‘and we’re not even on drugs’. I went to see my son and as there was no parking at his we went straight to the park and had a walk in the only break in the weather. I did an extra hour of healing at the mind body spirit fair and even though I’d got up early and been out for hours, I felt relaxed and unpressured. I went home and made a complicated new vegan meal effortlessly with no stress.
One night after my Buddhism class:
I stepped out of the double door and into the open air of the top floor of the multi-storey car park. I always park on the top floor, ostensibly for exercise, and while that is true, it’s also because it’s always got plenty of empty spaces and I get anxious about parking. And at the end of an evening or an afternoon of shopping I like to look at the view, the big sky, the cathedrals, the whirling flocks of birds that always seem to be there. My husband and son find my choice of parking annoying and always complain about the six flights of stairs or make us go up in the lift. I do it for me though, for the view, to take away the parking anxiety, to test my fitness, or perhaps, just to give me this moment tonight:
It was cool and warm at the same time, the sky grey with clouds, still light at around 9.30pm. I paused, leaning on the barriers, looking, and I just thought/felt: This is it
Earlier, the teacher had said, ‘if you catch Buddhism… but you may not, you may leave this and go off onto something else’, my neighbour said, ‘Islam’, which was funny because I’d been through an Islam phase a few months back. But I thought, please no… I wanted to say, ‘Don’t let me be out there again’ (like that bit in When Harry met Sally when the couple say to each other, ‘please say I’ll never have to be out there (dating) again’); but I am working on not talking as much and certainly not interrupting, so I don’t.
I have tried things: Islam, Paganism, various different New Age Practices, Hare Krishna , worship of a man, self abasement, therapy, all for three weeks or three months. It’s over
In the car, I put some music on The Stone Roses: This is the one, this is the one she’s waiting for. Windows down, warm cool breeze, lights bright like on MDMA.
Yes, (the clue’s in the title of the book) this turned out to be yet another one of those moments when I think, this is it, I’ve found it, this is the thing, this is what I believe in, that later slips away. And yet, I don’t regard any of it as a waste of time. And even though this was one of the strongest incidents in recent times, as the same Buddhist course later taught me, there is nothing to find.
There is nothing permanent, nothing lasts, nothing exists, only interactions. We all just knock against each other but all our scaffolding stops us connecting properly. Re finding yourself, your identity, personality, Buddhism says there is nothing to find= Scary. We are not fixed, we can change= Comforting. Suffering doesn’t last either. We do have a ‘relative self’- it’s good to be predictable to children (and patients) etc but with others this can be limiting (e.g. how we behave in our family). It’s hard to be your (new)self with family as they like to keep you the same.
The death of spiritual ignorance, is when you see things as they really are, e.g. work. Things are both much better and much worse than you previously thought.
Meditate on our bodies being made of the same things as everything else
Our teacher, in meditation, became aware that a strand of hair, attractive on the head, becomes repulsive in a plate of food. Same with toenails, she put all her nail clippings and hair onto shrine and thought, is it ‘repulsive’ because it reminds us of death and decay?
The mind changes much more than the body; at least the body persists relatively the same week to week, year to year; whilst the mind changes all the time, likes and dislike change. Tastes change with Buddhism (me and The News Quiz on Radio 4, I used to think it was funny, suddenly it just seemed mean). People refine their tastes with Buddhism (or with anything that increases your awareness?)
Meditation:
Where is yourself? Your self? In front? Above? Colour? Shape? Can’t find it? Because it isn’t anywhere; it doesn’t exist. (So therefore who did that mean senior manager hurt when she told me off on Friday? No one).
It is the clinging to the sense of self that causes all the suffering.
Get out of yourself. With more happiness and helping others. A cause outside of themselves, a musician, artist, all else swept aside in the service of what is. Really focussed; most people don’t do this and are dissipated. What is it that we really want and go for it. Hone in one something. Realise why we dissipate our energies.
See ways that we let life happen to us rather than directing life in a way that can be more fulfilling.
Buddhism advocates doing creative things, artistic things, if you decide you can, e.g. live without much money etc. Self expression is a generous act.
Homework:
Contemplate impermance
‘The spiritual life is a continual process of purification and elimination of unskilful states.’
‘Our experience is much richer than we realise. We are much better and much worse than we realise’ Deeper meditation helps to integrate this.
Buddhism helped, but I don’t know about the future… don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater- this clear awareness is great, don’t mess it up with caffeine, drinking, etc, yoga is good, meditation is probably good.
Everything I’ve done has been part of what got me here, but what got me right here was not meditating for a week or so, and going to bed early.
I’m even wondering if helping others really is all that, maybe it could just be about yourself, and those around you…
Re working, re healing, re thinking up an alternative career: when do I get to just enjoy life as it is, to do what I’m doing with both feet and not always be thinking I should be doing something else?
So right now, reading this, I feel wistful: I feel, I want to meditate, I want to do the Buddhism course, I want to get back into being spiritual again. But what would that do? What do I think that would do? I could do a load of yoga and meditating, do more healing, whenever I do it it feels so good, I want to focus on that… But what about the writing, not sure what is happening with that… How do I get to a place where I can conceptualise what it is I am doing- every time I get to where I think ‘this is it’, it changes, so where is my vantage point? There isn’t one, or there is, but it shifts from (and form) moment to moment. Suggestion: Pick one and write from that? What is the vantage point that I want to select and choose to write from- with so much choice I can choose one- after Buddhism, when I am into Krishnamurti? When I am just coming back from practical house selling and working mode? When I am back to meditating? When I am reflecting on all the things that have got me here? All the spiritual processes, yoga, body work, healing, reading, MDMA?
Why not just admit that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be than here: waking up on the massage table and realising, I am the kind of person who has this in her diary, and this, and this, and does this, and does this, and does this, and laughs at this and cries at this, and cannot watch horror films and is scared of big ships and on and on and on and on…
Paradoxes:
Work going both really well and really badly, as always
Loving being married at the same time as longing for more time alone
Ceasing all seeking behaviour yet knowing this is just another ‘thing’ I’m doing on the path
Happy with life as it is and thinking of new things to do and be
Everything is good, you are just making up things to worry about because you are scared of realising how good things are.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 5 Dreams
I dreamt I was about to go out in front of an audience, in a play. I thought, that’s not me, then I thought, well I obviously chose to do it, I must have signed up, gone to rehearsals and so on, been a willing participant, so it obviously isme now.
Are dreams something to do with it? I dreamed of walking though the ruins of a once grand hotel, all red velvet, mahogany and broken mirrors, with arty alternative people, smouldering bonfires, a cool punk band playing in the bandstand. Twenty years ago this would have been the place of my dreams but I didn’t stop, I just walked on past. I was hungry, I was looking for toasted sandwiches and a cup of tea.
Are dreams a pictorial version, an easy-read explanation of The Field of Possibilities and how to navigate and understand it? As well as showing me that the things that I liked 20 years ago, however much I liked them, it is okay to not be interested in them now.
For the first time in forever I haven’t got a to do list or a pile of lists of half done things or scribbles on leaflets. Stuff is done, put in the diary or on the mantelpiece or does not need to be written down (not that that used to stop me). This is so much more momentous than it sounds.
‘Fall into the Vortex and let the Universe do its stuff’. And this is what it does- it sorts everything out with the minimum of fuss, stress and effort (all you have to do is meditate).
I get hot, a lot of heat, hands, feet and heart, tingly, itchy, uncomfortable, like it’s burning through me, burning away all my mistakes, regrets, who I used to be. Leaving only who I am now, who I am, who am I? Who am I? Echoes back, just an echo? Is anything we experience just a sonar echo, just ourselves, plumbing and gauging the depths, pretending there’s something else out there when really we are all alone. Except that we aren’t all alone, we have ourselves.
Last night’s meditation: burning, searing, at my heart, clearing old issues, attitudes to middle age and also accepting my age and accepting that a lot of my antipathy was due to how I felt about myself getting older. (I used to be very down on salt and pepper bobs, parrot earrings and yoga cliques; I was searching for my own role model)
Scary dream re Sydney bridge wobbly, huge, glass floor, felt as if could fall in, etc, then the morning after I read in a magazine about ‘housewife dreams’- the nicer and calmer you have to be in the day, the more violent your dreams, maybe it’s the same with getting braver in day= scary dreams.
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).
Rachel 