Photo of me from a couple of weeks ago
Since I last posted I have discovered bright colours! (Thank you to Julie for my beautiful birthday top!)
Turns out, editing is harder than I thought, total focus is required, hence my absence. Plus in March I started work, part time, at a lower level but back to Occupational Therapy. Stepping down, and into a new clinical area, albeit just up the road and with a lovely team, is actually harder than I thought. I’m even wondering about stepping up again into a senior role and back into a more-hardcore-yet-familiar clinical setting.
As far as the book goes, there’s only so much writing I can do without my hand, wrist, arm and shoulder hurting. So there’s that. One or two evenings after work I do an hour or so, then on my days off I do around two hours. John my husband works 3-4 days per week in a shift pattern, giving us every Friday together and every other weekend, and time alone on the boat for each of us.
Book update: I’m giving myself a long weekend off, which feels like coming up for air, between the last pass through and the next, which will be editorial advice, mainly cutting here and there and working on strengthening the endings of each chapter, and adding a little personal background as needed.
I’ve been helping a friend with some editing and as I had hoped, have discovered a talent for this. I am very gentle, supportive and responsive and I have a sharp critical eye I can access to help you. If you want help I am available for editing work, use the contact box and I’ll get straight back to you.
More big news: We are in the process of putting a website together to collate all the information and knowledge we have about the nature of reality, the conditioning we are all a victim of etc etc; an online community for exchanging ideas and asking questions about our own experiences… Watch this space, as they say!
The cats came back at the start of lockdown!
Follow me on Instagram thisisrachelhill (mainly writing stuff and photos of everyday boat life)
Named after the really great book by Stephen King On Writing (I can’t actually read any of his books because I don’t like reading anything scary, but I love this book about the writing process.
The last time my mood got really low was during a period of stress at work, a minor distance from my husband, and loneliness in my female friendships. On top of that, I had stopped writing. At the time, I didn’t care, I didn’t even put it down as a hobby when I filled out an application form. Instead I put singing!* I spent the day alone watching Boyhood(real time film about families and growing up that shows just how fast it all goes). It showed the good bits and the mistakes and got me thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I called a few friends, they were all busy or unavailable. I panicked: should I go back to counselling? Was I depressed? Or was I, as I suddenly realised, just a writer who had stopped writing? My fingers tingled, and I began to write…
*I moved and had to find a new yoga class. The yoga teacher introduced me to someone who lived in my new town. That person invited me to join a pop up singing group. I was blissed out after yoga and agreed. I thought maybe it was about me getting rid of my inhibitions. It did do that, but it led onto something much more important. The singing group woman also invited me to a book club and gave me the names of the two books they were reading. I went to the library, it was closed, I went to the book shop, it only had one of the two books in- Orlando. I made my excuses about the book club but I read Orlando. It was better, much better for me than the singing; seeming to unlock my writing, focus and structure, and if I had to pay my dues in advance by wearing a silly hat and singing out of tune in public then it was a fair price.
The fact that I got so low over a film shows how fragile my state of being was and how sensitive I was that a film could put me in that place, and how this new found neutrality is quite literally a life saver, that now I can run over a baby rabbit on the way to work and barely give it a second thought.**
**If you are like I was, and find even reading that upsetting, let me ease you by saying: It ran out in front of me as I was driving along a main road, hurtling across the middle. I put on my brakes- I didn’t slam them, but nor did I check in my rear view mirror either, so that evens out the me-rabbit balance, but I felt it go under the front driver wheel. I wondered afterwards, would it have been better not to have braked? If I had been going slightly faster, would I have gone past it, or at least would the front wheels have gone past it? An old boyfriend of mine told me that animals have better instincts than us and it is best not to brake as they will have judged it. So are all the dead animals and birds at the side of the roads not as I always thought, due to people driving too fast, or animals and birds walking, running or flying unavoidably out in front of you, but are actually the result of caring drivers slamming on their brakes? Probably not. I think he was mainly referring to deer, as he had hit one a few years previously, driving through Thetford Forest. It had run out, no way to stop it. He said they made eye contact as it hit the windscreen. That was my Vietnam, he used to say. I don’t know if baby rabbits are as capable as grown deer of judging speeds and distances of traffic on main roads. Apparently they don’t even know what to eat, they just eat anything and everything and it’s just luck or trial and error if they survive. So it’s not that I didn’t give running over a baby rabbit a second thought, it’s just that I decided not to get upset about it.
I am not aiming for balance, or a balanced life, oh no, Elizabeth Gilbert says you cannot do that and I largely concur. I am aiming for a happy life subject to circumstances and a ‘spiritual’ life whatever the circumstances, indeed friction helps me grow. I am glad to be developing and all my life is helping me to do that (all my life as in all that’s going on in my life right now and all my life as in past, present and future). I fully know I may concentrate on one part sometimes and other parts other times and that life will show me what to do next.
Money: ‘Studying’ (aka obsessively binge watching) Shameless USA, reading about the Buy Nothing movement, hibernating, in order to get my finances under control. I didn’t set out to watch Shameless in order to do this, but I am sure it helped. Spend as little as possible. Who needs money when you’ve got words. Not being flippant about people who don’t have money for food, I just mean that I can cope with staying in etc because I have this to do.
Work: I got locked in my pattern again: I take on too much, get too tired, or in this case, there just was too much happening (lots of people leaving/off sick); me pretending to everyone including myself that it is okay and not accessing support. I end up feeling burned out, thinking I have to meet the every emotional, professional, advisory and every other need of everyone in my team whilst also doing a good job for my patients, other dept. duties, answering emails, thinking up new stuff, keeping one step ahead, keeping everyone happy… all of which is obviously ludicrously impossible.
The next thing that happens is that I start to get self conscious and paranoid, worrying about what everyone thinks of me, wondering if anything I do is any good, wishing I could start over again and be different- stop being shy, communicate better, stop avoiding the strong senior managers because I’m intimidated. I avoid criticism, I am scared of it so I avoid people, and that just makes everything worse…
To contradict what I just wrote, I have actually in many ways been more relaxed at work. I have stopped to chat. I have worked slowly. I have left things undone. I have chosen the fun things and put off the boring ones. I have cancelled things to make my week manageable. I have noticed that I usually go around on full pelt (resenting others who stop to chat!) and the busier I get, the more I take on; working up to the last minute so I am always late and stressed, as if I don’t deserve to take it easy and sit calmly in a room waiting for a meeting to start (I have done this at least once recently!). It’s going to be an adjustment…
So although tonight’s writing mission was mainly about dealing with work stress, and was more about writing as therapy than writing, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to finish this book: Don’t get distracted by the idea that you should be so ‘spiritual’ as to be above wanting or needing to do anything. This might be idealised as sitting on top of a mountain meditating but in practice becomes eating oven chips and cold baked beans and watching rubbish on Netflix*. A creative mind is like a border collie, remember…
*There is really great stuff on Netflix but it is definitely possible to waste time on it as well.
April 2020
Ah, the joy of burning out! Now that I’ve left it behind there are things I miss and value about that job: The feeling of working at the outer edges of my capabilities; the sheer creative freedom: being given big projects with little support and direction, and having a team to lead meant I could at least in part set the tone and direction of my department; the buzz of so much pressure, both external and from within myself. Finding creative ways to postitively engage patients and provide hope within a medium secure forensic setting was what I was good at and felt rewarding. Working in such a heartbreaking and violent setting meant that what we did felt really important, and the fact that we were there meant that we were strong. But ‘You can have it all, just maybe not all at the same time,’ and right now, working three days a week in an easier job, I have the time and space to keep on finishing my book.
John (Anthony) 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 on 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.’
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 doors 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 didn’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…
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 her 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.
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 on (one) something. Realise how 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?
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 (seeking) 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.
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, and 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 during the day, the more violent your dreams! Maybe it’s the same with getting braver in the day= being scared in dreams?
Extracts from draft chapter about our time in Cambodia in January
We got the boat to the mainland. Again, it was touristy and busy. There was the occasional pretty sight; a navy umbrella with silver edges, a burgundy shirt with sequins, the sun catching and making them sparkle. We went to get a tuk tuk to Otres Village where we were staying, straight away.
I had read about the development in Sihanoukeville, largely Chinese led, in an expats magazine in Phnom Penh. Khmer owned small shops and restaurants were being sold to Chinese developers and the land redeveloped for hotels and casinos. Westerners were selling up and moving out, fed up with living beside constant building work, and bemoaning the loss of familiar restaurants, bars and shops, and that the disappearance of the old shop fronts was changing the character.
Sihanoukville was as ‘bad’ as we had feared; one large building site, but fascinating; huge hotels half built, and so many, some covered in green netting. Others almost done and we could see through the windows to big dormitories of beds; we passed developments of small huts with little space in between, a different standard of personal space to that of Westerners.
In the tuk tuk, the road long and dusty, building work all around, my main concern was dust after so much pollution on the trip. Luckily, where we were staying was something of an oasis, down a side street and down a path off that. It had changed names and hands, and was in between style wise. The huts were wooden and the shower room walls were decorated with wildlife murals. The toilets must have previously been compost ones, the instructions still painted on the wall although they were now ordinary ones. There were signs for an alternative pharmacy, now closed. In contrast the restaurant area looked recently done up, with new metal furniture and cushions, glass topped tables, and a smart looking cream printed menu.
Our wooden hut with beams was open in places, with slight gaps in the ceiling and walls but with a reassuring mosquito net. On a beam above the door was a bag of weed, some papers and a lighter, left by the previous occupants for the next ones, probably they were taking a flight.
The huts had balconies with chairs, with little bushes in front and dotted around the garden. Staff looked like they were working on the garden which was half scrubby half beds of bushes. Everything was in the process of changing. We saw Khmer people, at our place and in the street, carrying so much, thick bamboo, firewood, poles, long pieces of wood, balanced on one shoulder.
One day I hung my bag on the hook on the back of the shower door, when I took it off I saw that there was a little frog perched right on the end of the hook, luckily I hadn’t touched it with my bag. I called Anthony to come and look. ‘We should move it, in case it gets hurt,’ Anthony said. I moved a bin underneath so it wouldn’t have so far if it jumped down to the floor. As soon as we went near, it jumped, not down but across and stuck to the door, legs outstretched, feet sticking to the wood. It was like something out of a David Attenborough programme.
There were three kittens around the restaurant who would play, sit on laps, eat noodles and curl up to sleep beside you. Not all the guests liked them around them while they were eating though, and sometimes they would be shut in a box at meal times.
There was a tree just beside the restaurant that the kittens used to play in, it had a hole at the bottom. One kitten was braver and would jump from the restaurant wall into the tree; the others watched but didn’t jump. The three kittens were very similar size but that one was more well muscled, so it could do more, or was it because it did more? One day I was sitting on my own in the restaurant having breakfast, coffee, huge chunks of French bread and jam. One of the kittens was on a nearby table playing with an arrangement of fake flowers, those ones where the heads will pull off the stems, the kitten seemed to know this and managed to pull one of the heads off… so fun.
On the main road were shops, travel agencies and small supermarkets. Also wooden buildings, bars and restaurants, many owned by Westerners, and almost all with for sale or to let signs up. We saw a Western woman, blonde, skinny, with dreadlocks, be dropped off by a man on a motorbike. She had a bloodied face, and her expression and walk made her look like a zombie; we wondered whether she was on Ketamine, which was freely available to buy in the pharmacies. We watched her for a while, saw that she went into a pharmacy, hopefully for some first aid… We saw a vegan street stall selling, unbelievably, homemade Vegan Snickers. Vegan Snickers! He was a young Westerner. We asked him what he was going to do. He said he was thinking about going to the Anderman Islands…
Sitting outside on our balcony I saw a woman walk past our hut a couple of times. ‘Friend’ I said to myself, and resolved to speak to her next time she passed. It was the same for her, she said she’d wanted to speak to us too. Of course at first it’s the outside things: our kind of age, kind of hippyish in a natural way, no makeup, loose natural hair, a printed cotton smock.
R was Spanish. As a young woman she had left home and gone off to Osho’s ashram in Pune, India, which explained why my husband ‘recognised’ her; he has known several sannyasins. She runs workshops in Italy and Spain on family relationships and consciousness raising. She created a life totally her own that was nothing like her parents’ lives or their expectations for her. When her mother became ill she returned home to care for her. She decided to just be herself, ‘Here I am, I run these workshops, I am a teacher,’ rather than try to ‘fit in’ by being inauthentic. She said it was very hard, going back. Back, ‘In the collective,’ she called it, the fear comes; security, pensions, savings, all those things she had happily not worried about for years.
We all spoke about our times in more tourist/holiday maker areas. ‘You can have your own experience even in a party place,’ R said.
I liked watching how R made decisions. She was going somewhere, then the flight was cancelled, so she thought about it and decided to get a bus instead, break up the journey and go and visit somewhere else halfway. Travelling alone, living alone, making her own work, collaborating with others, using what she had learned at Osho’s and all learning since, always reading and learning new things too. People in different venues invite her and if something is put on, people will come, she is known. ‘I should really work out money,’ she said, describing that she just kind of spends it, treats it with a light touch, it comes and goes.
We often had dinner or lunch together, sometimes at the onsite restaurant but mainly we ate on the main road at a cheaper place, and with lovely staff. ‘You are an angel,’ R said to our regular waiter on the last day. ‘You have come down from heaven, an angel.’ She expressed herself so easily, like Renate in Varkala, India who when we said goodbye had said to me, ‘If I’d had a daughter like you, we’d have had such fun,’ whereas I sometimes find my English reserve gets the better of me.
R had a light, a treatment light, like sungazing. After multiple reassurances that it was safe to do so, I went and had a go. ‘Don’t rush back, take your time and rest afterwards,’ she said. I did it in the hut and sat still there afterwards for a while. The light caused visuals, both behind and in front of my eyes, and afterwards, ideas, a burst of energy, I even felt inspired to do a job search of potential employers near the boat. A little while later I went for a walk to the beach. On the road leading to the beach was an insane mini funfair with small rides, stalls of garish plastic toys and brightly coloured balloons. At a canned drink stall a woman in a pretty dress was semi asleep, she woke and we caught eyes and smiled. I’d not brought any money so I couldn’t buy anything. At the beach the vegan man was there but I went past him, I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone.
It was unusual for me to go out alone, and unusual for me to go off and not say anything, the appeal of a bit of interstitial time, unknown, unexplained. I stood on the beach facing the sea. There was a big hotel block almost like a skyscraper to the right of me, lit up. The beach was busy with people. It was the end of the day, lights coming on, the sea looked pretty. I was in the moment then.
About the author
Sold house, left job, gave away almost everything else. With husband went travelling for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat, and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.
In Varkala we were ill, in Bangalore we wandered around the Botanical Gardens wondering about The Future, and in Hampi we got happy again. There’s so much to love here.
Temples, so many temples. There was a huge festival and many people slept inside the temple afterwards.
Monkeys. On Christmas Eve I watched a monkey eating scraps from a bin. I bought some bananas and dropped them into the bin (I was cautious about being too obvious having got surrounded by monkeys in Nepal), but unfortunately this frightened the monkey and they came after me, teeth bared. They didn’t want the bananas either. An Indian man shooed it away and gave me back the bananas which I fed to some less intimidating cows. On Christmas Day we went back to the main temple and hand fed the monkeys peanuts in shells, which they liked. On Boxing Day we threw some peanuts on the ground for some languid looking monkeys, one of whom quickly sprang up and jumped on my husband’s bag where the nuts were. ‘Never describe a monkey as languid,’ he said when he had recovered. And just to cement the full range of monkey experiences, my husband saw one cradling a dead monkey in its arms.
The scenery is almost too much to take in, it is so unreal looking but so peaceful at the same time.
The people
Such sweet simple pleasures to be had here. Buying roasted peanuts in shells, bananas, coconuts and chai from the roadside stalls. Peanuts have become the new cigarettes, prompting interactions and sharing them with people. So many school trips and families here for pilgrimage, sleeping outside in the temple area or at the roadside. So many kids saying hi to us.
Everything… We arrived early in the morning on Christmas Eve after a night of little sleep (there was a reason why ours were the only two beds left, they were over the back wheel arch, and the road to Hampi is very bumpy!) Sitting at the chai stall under the full moon, the stalls closed and brown, the streets dusty and grey. Bits of colour from the pink and purple of skirts. Buses arriving, tuk tuks coming to meet the new arrivals. Every place is something new, a new start, a new state of mind. I am so happy we are ending our India journey in Hampi, where I first fell in love with India back in April.
Thank you very much for reading
For more pictures of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
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These photographs were taken by my mum on a recent holiday. Once a month or so she’ll send me a photo of something of interest with a few lines. I do the same.
My son and I communicate mainly via messenger messages and occasional video calls. We exchange news, everything’s going okay. A couple of times recently he’s needed money and I’ve sent some.
It’s been a source of some anxiety and a fair amount of guilt that these relationships aren’t as close as, as what? As some other people’s family relationships look from the outside? As my idea of what these relationships should look like? (except that I have no idea…..) As what they were? No, that had to change.
Anyway, in the midst of my painful illness I had a moment of clarity: I realised suddenly: Maybe they are happy with it being this way.
When I went to live and work in New Zealand for a year I had a similar experience of interpersonal conflict to that which I wrote about in my post ‘Every day beautiful, Every day shit,’ only without the self awareness to deal with it or take any responsibility for my part. I emailed my mum, she emailed me back a long pep talk, and was probably quite concerned. Even when things were going well, I used to phone her from New Zealand a lot. I was thirty-five years old.
My son seems to do better the more independent he is from me, without me worrying about him.
I’ve written about my relationship with my son here: This is life
Because of her own experience; property, security, inheritance were pillars for my mum. Again due to her own experiences; as a child, teen and young woman I was conditioned to be anti-marriage, anti-men, anti-relationship. Anti creating a world with another.
And yet that’s exactly what I’ve done with my husband and it’s amazing. Right now, reading Krishnamurti, discussing ideas, being on a joint quest…
Here is a blog post summarising the life changing decisions we took to dismantle our previous lives and get to India here: Orientation
And the impact it had on my relationship with my mother here: The price of freedom
But what can I do, what is my part in fixing or accepting responsibility for these relationships? Mother and son. Past and present?
And what about our decisions?
I’ve been a big fan of the idea of illuminating the darkness, and taking responsibility for everything that’s ‘wrong’ in one’s life, for any sadness.
But I’ve realised that it’s also about accepting responsibility for my own happiness.
My husband and I discussed, Could we live with later thinking that we had gone crazy and regretting it and own it, the good and the bad? We discussed the charge of, will we regret it? worst case scenarios and solutions, but still I say, It’s better than dying without having lived.
What, pregnant at eighteen, getting a career to support me and my son, getting a mortgage at thirty-five years old that would last until I was sixty, so that on my deathbed I’d say Well I couldn’t have done that (any of the exciting things- I imagine possibilities flitting through my mind on death), and then realising, Oh my God, you could have done! You could have done! You could have gone out and done x, and x, and x, there wasn’t anything to worry about. There was never anything to worry about. Your life is your life*, best message for all even with kids.
We had lunch and talked about keeping hold of this attitude to life once we return to the UK. How? Manage fear. Don’t take life too seriously. Remember the people we’ve met travelling and how it works for them. I wrote a post about some of them called Sab Kuch Milega (everything possible).
We’ve cemented voluntary simplicity minimalism and ideas about reducing consumerism, by having bought a boat to live on. There’s no space to accumulate. There’s a physical check on it! The moorings are in a completely new area of the country. There won’t be any old influences. We’ve given ourselves the best chance we could.
So if the reason for doing all this is the pursuit of enlightenment and the definition of enlightenment is to see things as they really are…
Can you have light in some areas and not in others, just as some bits of life can be going ‘well’ and others ‘not so well’?
While we were in Pushkar my son had his teeth done. It was such a good thing (after ten years of rotten teeth and poorly gums etc the problems are gone, and he quickly recovered and was so over the moon about facing his fears and it being resolved); but at the same time it was so sad (that they ever got that bad, that it went on for so long, and that he had so many teeth removed).
I spent that night talking, processing, again, wishing to go to a place that can’t exist, where he’s an adult with no teeth problems, or to go back to his childhood and somehow do it all again correctly whatever it was that I did or didn’t do that could have altered it. I don’t know what that would be and I don’t know if I could do it even if given a chance, so impossible, pointless….
Just days after, even hours after, he seemed okay, and a month later, it was as if nothing had happened at all. It doesn’t escape my notice that he was able to finally take charge of himself while I was away.
The night I asked myself all these big questions about my family relationships, I dreamt about going round to my mum’s old house (a sixteenth century farmhouse that she’d lovingly restored and lived in for forty years (true)) as she was preparing to sell (true), and her pointing out memories, including a bit of plaster on the wall where a butterfly had landed and made a print (dream only!). Maybe you could get someone to cast it, I said, in the dream. Her so attached to bricks and mortar, making that house her whole life. She regarded herself as custodian of the house, she put it above a relationship (she said she couldn’t marry or live with anyone as they would be able to claim half the house if they separated).
I thought about what I could have done differently on my part. The thing would have been to keep separate, not share boyfriend details, not spend each holiday there, not run every decision by her, not do everything she said… yet at the same time it was hard as I was nineteen with a baby, twenty and single mum of a toddler….. So maybe like with my son’s teeth there’s nothing that could have been done differently by me at that time.
And of course now there’s definitely nothing that can be done. No time machine. It- things, all things, can only be fixed in the present.
So exchanges of emails with photos, a few lines, and me living my life, in India, writing a book, discussing Krishnamurti and deepening my relationship with my husband, really it is the way things are.
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Part of a reflective review inspired by illness, our return to Kerala, and by being eight and a half months into our twelve month trip.
* Your life is your life, go all the way (Charles Bukowski)
For photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
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We had gone for a night to Nagarkot with someone we met at the Kathmandu hostel. It had felt good to get out of Kathmandu and to see countryside, and agriculture. From the car window I had seen straw stacked in round peaks, the stacks looked like little houses.
A pile of straw fanned out against a wall and onto the ground in perfect symmetry. In the centre of it all slept a sandy coloured dog, perfectly coordinated.
I had seen rice terraces making green steps in the landscape. To one side there was farmland and then alarming drops as we ascended, on the other side a wall of roughly hewn sandy coloured rock with big chunks of rock on the ground below. The rocks sparkled in the sunlight.
Our guesthouse was up some wooden steps. To one side was a rough wall of rock with delicate looking plants growing out. Close up I could see that the rock sparkled; beautiful, like a natural rockery…
Continued from previous post…
An hour earlier I’d stood at the edge of the guesthouse’s sunny terrace, looking out at the view (in the header photograph) which was so beautiful it was unreal, talking with my husband, and crying.
The previous day I had allowed myself to be provoked during a conversation about vegetarianism and veganism.
As every vegan-baiter and vegan knows only too well, the fastest way to annoy a vegan or vegetarian is to bring up the suffering of plants; refer to cavemen and lions; question the vegetarian/vegan about the origins of their essential prescribed medication; and then regale them with tales of family hunting expeditions.
Still, I shouldn’t have lost my cool; even though to do so gave me a temporary rush of energy- I almost never get really annoyed.
But the subsequent come down, alongside going over and over the whole thing in my mind, seeing where I had acted ineffectively and regretting my part, caused my mood to spiral downwards, all the way through feeling fat and ugly, down to social awkwardness, paralysis, right the way down to self harm and suicide fantasies.
As an observer of myself, it was interesting to watch, and reinforced what I already knew: that confrontation and argument is not beneficial to my wellbeing. However, that’s not to say it was not beneficial in other ways, I learned a lot, even if I didn’t want to repeat the experience in a hurry.
Reflecting on it on my own late at night in bed, and then talking about it with my husband in the morning, cemented my understanding: use such encounters (and everything) to develop or wake myself up, not to try and develop or wake the other person up; and forced me to let myself off: ‘We’re not Buddhas,’ my husband said.
After we said goodbye to Oasis and the rest of the staff we walked down to the bus stop and caught the first of the return buses.
Moments of fear on the journey: the drop, the unmade road in a bumpy bus. Just breathe, accept, and be. Moments of luminosity: a woman walking quickly towards the bus, she was wearing plastic slip on sandals with thick socks, a cotton saree, a cardigan, and a crocheted pink hat. My heart pinged open, again. Just breathe, accept, and be.
Between buses we stopped for food; black coffee and fruit salad, a plate of chopped fruit with a fork, and a cool glass of water. We sat inside looking out onto a lake. It reminded me of Pushkar.
In front of us was a big tree, with women selling vegetables and fruit from blankets spread out on the ground.
I bought two cigarettes and they brought them on a white saucer with an ashtray and a box of the thin matches that I often find so hard to light. I remembered on a day trip to Kollam in Kerala, we stopped to look at a fish market and I bought a cigarette from a little stall. Under pressure, worried about using a poor person’s last few matches, I couldn’t light them and my husband helped me. Here there were plenty and I didn’t worry, I lit it first go each time.
I could see the refection of big dark green trees on the other side of the lake in the water. To my left at the far end of the lake, was a group of women in different beautifully coloured sarees, all reflected in the water below.
The water was so still. I thought about how water needs to be still to reflect the world and about how this is a metaphor.
Thank you very much for reading
* Oasis from The Hotel at the End of the Universe
Photographs taken by my husband For more photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony
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Not all those who wander are lost: Tokyo (Extract of Draft Chapter for book)
The clothes were subtle, stylish and just so Japanese, exactly like I would have expected if I had thought about it. During the week lots of office wear, the men in suits with white shirts, the women in black pencil skirts and white or cream pretty blouses. I noticed that the 7/11s and similar stores sold not just tights and stockings but also ties and men’s white office shirts. On Sunday clothes were a bit different, I saw lots of women in wide leg slightly cropped trousers, mainly black, navy or taupe. I saw two women in smart clinging wool skirts, like soft office wear.
There were lots of smocked blouses with puff sleeves; long smocks like artists smocks; long dresses with dungaree tops in taupe or black, and loose cotton trousers that would be perfect for India. Lots of almost 1940s style print dresses, often brown but sometimes in blue, long, high neck, buttoned. Just above the knee sticky out skirts with net underneath with cute blouses; and longer dresses with circle designs and asymmetrical hems. And one evening I saw a woman dressed up like a doll in a big bright pink lacey dress with laced up bodice.
Because most people I saw were so smartly dressed, I noticed when I saw a man wearing old work trousers and a holey t shirt. The men’s work trousers I saw were made out of thick heavy cotton, and in a wrap around style. I also saw a man dressed Andy Warhol style in high waisted black trousers with a tight black sweater tucked in.
On the Metro I saw young people wearing T shirts with a zip pouch pocket at the front, I wanted one of those but didn’t find one.
I went shopping at UNIQLO. I had actually heard of this when I was in the UK, and then B confirmed that it was good and cheap. It was situated at the top of a mall, within walking distance from my hostel. It was such a neat, orderly and peaceful shopping environment. Wandering around I couldn’t help thinking what my punky teen/twenty something self would have thought of all this… Peaceful simplicity, is what it seemed like to me now. The clothes were functional, conventional and plain, except a few stripes or spots. The colors were moss, navy, black, white, taupe, brown, white, cream, grey.
There were lots of black trousers, t shirts, long sleeved tops, jumpers and a big section of loungewear. As Tokyo was coming into winter it wasn’t easy to find things that were thin enough for India, which would still be hot when I went back. Even so I couldn’t help running my hands longingly over fleece lined hoodies, fake fur snoods and scarves and even fake fur bags and purses. It was ridiculous but the idea of shopping for winter was kind of tempting.
At the changing rooms I was given a hood, made out of thin white material (like the facing material inside collars). This was to put over the head to stop makeup getting on the clothes being tried on, which I thought was a good idea. I bought two tops, smock like with three quarter length sleeves, one navy, one taupe; a pair of wide leg trousers, too hot for India really but fitted so nicely, and a pair of comfy sweat pants, also too thick for India, but Tokyo was cold and I couldn’t resist. When the sun shone it was very hot but when it rained it was cold and at my hostel the ac kept it on the cool side. I had the trousers turned up, they did free one hour alterations, even for clothes at a budget price, and everything done with impeccable customer service.
After Uniqlo I asked at tourist information for directions and went shopping for presents. I found the mall and the shop and managed to buy everything I wanted, and found my way home without looking at a map.
When I was out with B we bought snacks from the mini marts, B showed me what I could eat, rice triangles wrapped in seaweed, little pots of sticky soya beans, and my absolute favourite, tofu rolls, filled with rice and wasabi. I discovered even more in my local shops, miso and tofu salad and cooked chunks of soft pumpkin in pouches which I ate for lunches.
Even including breakfast cake compromises there didn’t seem like there was much to eat; there was enough but not loads to choose from or be tempted by. I did a lot of walking and managed to lose a little weight.
Most of the time in the evening I ate at the same place, on my second day the woman had understood me asking for vegetarian and been really friendly and helpful, showing me the menu cards that had English on and showing me how to choose and put the money in; you had to choose and pay at the front and hand the order ticket to the staff. I always had the same dish, noodles, seaweed, Japanese leeks which were tiny, strong and oniony, in a broth with thick triangular slabs of tofu.
One evening after dinner I went for a walk, past the amazing office buildings, my favourite was a huge glossy white sided building that rose up from the pavement like the side of a ship, and was a landmark for me. After the big office buildings, into the restaurants area, I saw a big multi floored pink building. A pink building! I stopped and stared; I saw a sign, it was a music school.
On the way back I saw a big rat, I’d seen a rat in Bangkok and lots in India and wasn’t afraid, just a little startled when it ran back and forth across the pavement in front of me.
At the end of one of the side streets near the hostel was a tiny pale pink faded apartment at the top of a neutral coloured building. A metal fire escape ran from the top down to the bottom. I changed my mind from the Gaudi mosaic apartment building, I’d live there instead.
I walked to meet B in Shinjuku East Side Square, actually not that far from the Uniqlo but the route was different. Uniqlo had been more or less straight following the Shinjuku gardens, which meant I only had to check the route every now and again, but this involved many little twists and turns which meant I had to hold my tablet and follow the blue dot all the way there. I got the map directions up at the hostel then it carried on working even while I was out and about with no internet.
On my route I saw apartment buildings from a different view, from side roads and little alleys, from down flights of steps, above me the apartment blocks, so many apartments packed neatly in.
It was a sunny day and the sky was blue above the grey and pale fawn buildings. I concentrated on remembering landmarks, a blue bridge, an animal hospital. Further on were smarter buildings, a huge one like a big city office block but it was actually apartments. It looked like the side of a spaceship, dark grey, all these little apartments, so many rows, so many columns, so many deep, I tried to count them but it made my head spin.
At the crossing I got confused, a Japanese man asked me if I needed help. ‘Cross over, turn left, look up, and you’ll see it, big building,’ he said. B had sent me a photo of Shinjuku East Side Square, one of the buildings was white, made of sleek shiny white bricks, which interlocked and overlapped to make gaps and textures, and was instantly recognisable. The man was right, I could see it from where he said, about half way there, and I was able to follow it as I followed the blue dot back into side streets and alleys again.
Down a quiet little street I saw a row of three open umbrellas hung up on the outside wall of a house. Each was a different shade of light pink, it looked like an art installation. The umbrellas and a few bits of laundry hung up on balconies were the only color. Seeing the backs of houses and the little details such as little plants in pots set out on the back doorsteps of houses, it felt like I was seeing real life behind the scenes.
A little further on, down another alleyway, amongst buildings which seemed to all be different shades of cream, I saw some brightly colored delivery crates outside the back of a shop. Red, green and yellow, the only color in that scene.
Shinjuku square, with its big modern buildings outside and shops and cafes inside, was beautifully designed; big circles, small circles, ovals, spirals. In the centre was a teardrop shaped pond. B told me that things are inspired by nature and designed with meaning, so that the pool might be the shape of a raindrop, for example, as well as having a spiritual meaning.
This was the first time I had watched and followed the blue dot the whole time all the way somewhere. I noticed how much it distracted me from being mindful and from noticing things in my environment. I usually have enough to do with noticing, remembering and thinking about things I see, as well as noticing and processing feelings and emotions and maintaining a level of awareness. Following the blue dot really took my attention away, let alone what it would have been like if I’d had a smart phone with notifications, messages etc.
As I had my tablet with me, I thought about taking photographs, but it just felt like another thing to do and think about when I already felt distracted. I could see though that I could really enjoy taking photographs, I do notice little pieces of beauty, but I can’t do everything, or not all at once anyway…
Travel update
In Pushkar until 15 Nov, then overnight bus to Delhi, then Delhi for one night then fly to Nepal for two weeks.
Writing update and Changes to Blog
Writing draft wise, I have now completed Thailand and Tokyo, and am back in India, which feels much easier. Whilst I am settled somewhere easy, I’m going to set aside some time to work on an old unfinished chapter, about our time in Kerala. Although it’s easier and more enjoyable to write about more recent places, Kerala will only get further away and less easy to tackle!
Then I will go back to the beginning, add any corrections or additions already identified, and send each draft chapter to B to read. Of course I am also keeping notes about the present as it unfolds, to return to once the other work is completed.
Thank you so much for indulging me during these past months of me not really doing a blog but just posting draft chapters up every week, often very long. Thank you so very much for reading and commenting, your support and feedback has helped me so much.
For the blog, from next week I will embrace being a blogger and just give myself and the blog free rein to do our own thing.
We had gone for a night to Nagarkot with someone we met at the Kathmandu hostel. It had felt good to get out of Kathmandu and to see countryside, and agriculture. From the car window I had seen straw stacked in round peaks, the stacks looked like little houses.
Rachel 